


Pure

by WorryinglyInnocent



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: AU, Angst, F/M, First Time, Rumbelle - Freeform, Smut, Therapy, abstinence culture, purity culture, virgin!Belle, with a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-16 17:48:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 54,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21501673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorryinglyInnocent/pseuds/WorryinglyInnocent
Summary: Belle wanted to wait until marriage before she had sex for the first time. It was the one thing that still stuck in her mind after leaving her small town upbringing steeped in religious doctrine and abstinence culture. When her wedding night comes, however, the purity ideals of Storybrooke’s sex education are hard to shake off, and making the transition from virgin to sexually active is more difficult than she anticipated. With the help of a patient husband, Belle begins an intimate journey into understanding her body, her desires, and her identity as a woman.
Relationships: Belle/Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold
Comments: 142
Kudos: 172





	1. Chapter 1

Belle wondered how long she could stretch out brushing her teeth and taking her make-up off.

She glanced over at the hanger on the back of the bathroom door, looking at the nightdress from top to bottom and back again. She’d had so much fun on that shopping trip with Ruby and Mulan; the assistant in the lingerie shop must have thought that they were all completely mad from the amount of raucous laughter going on. She’d tried on so many different combinations and they’d had such a good giggle, and she’d finally decided on this one. Classic white with blue lace trim; she’d thought that she’d looked the cat’s pyjamas in it. This was what she was going to wear when she lost her virginity.

Now that the moment was getting ever closer, though, Belle was having second thoughts. Not about the nightdress, per se. Not even about the whole losing her virginity part. It was more that she’d thought herself into a hole and she didn’t really know how to think herself out of it, because this was one thing that she’d always tamped down and kept close to her chest. Even when they’d been talking about this particular night and its significance back in the lingerie shop, Belle still hadn’t let on to Ruby and Mulan that she was still a virgin.

Aiden knew. After all, she’d been his girlfriend for three years, he definitely knew that there was a reason they hadn’t had sex in all that time.

Her wedding dress hung on the hook beside the nightgown, and the sight of it made Belle smile. There wasn’t anything remotely strange or scandalous about it by today’s standards, but she’d certainly caused a stir when she’d walked down the aisle in it. So much lace, so tight in the bodice, it was obscene! Of course, if the residents of Storybrooke had their way, then all women would be covered up from chin to ankles in shapeless wool sacks all the time.

For all Belle had taken her life into her own hands and moved away from the culture she had grown up in, for all she had learned to be able to laugh at it looking back, somehow coming back here made it so much harder to do, and it made her so angry. She spat her mouthful of toothpaste into the sink with more rage than she’d expected, splattering white foam all over the taps. At least cleaning that up gave her a bit more time to clear her head in.

Of all the things that had been drilled into her as a child and teenager, all the stupid purity ideals of the town she’d called home for eighteen years, why was the only one that she couldn’t let go of the one that was so very important? Why, out of everything she’d been told, had she still been so determined to wait until she was married before she had sex for the first time?

It was a bit late to change her mind about it now. She couldn’t exactly go back in time a couple of years, say ‘to hell with it’ and jump Aiden’s bones the first chance she got. And now she’d got herself stuck into a little rut entirely of her own making.

Maybe if she stayed here in the bathroom long enough, Aiden would come and rescue her and take everything out of her hands. He would come and knock on the door and ask if she was all right, and she would open it, and he would be standing there naked and gorgeous, as comfortable in his birthday suit as he was in his normal one. She’d throw herself into his arms and kiss him for all he was worth, and he’d pick her up and lay her down on the bed and…

That was the point at which the fantasy started to become unstuck. She’d read more than enough romance fiction in her time. She’d read more than enough sex scenes and seen more than enough of them on the TV. She knew what came next. She was actually looking forward to what came next. Well, she was looking forward to it most of the time. Right now, she didn’t know how she was feeling towards it. The flush was rising in her cheeks and the heat was beginning to build between her legs, and it was exactly the same as when she’d been staying over at Aiden’s that time and had accidentally seen him naked and oh, she had wanted him so badly for all of ten minutes before the snide voice in her head piped up and told her that good girls didn’t want that kind of thing.

Why this? Why now? Why was this the one thing she couldn’t get over?

She’d got over her fear of tampons. The chemist in Storybrooke had refused to stock them, saying that they were Satan’s fingers and that if she used them she’d be impregnated with the devil’s spawn. (When Belle had asked what kind of anatomy the devil had to have in order to impregnate women with his severed fingers, and what happened to all the millions of hell babies that the women outside of Storybrooke who used tampons were giving birth to daily, the chemist had just glared at her.)

She’d managed to make sense of the ridiculously contradictory advice given to her by Madame Georgette the hairdresser about bikini waxing for her wedding night. Only sluts and whores waxed off all their pubic hair, but obviously, your husband will think you’re dirty and disgusting if he sees you with any hair down there because pure girls don’t have body hair. Make of that paradox what you will, Belle had thought to herself. Evidently the only solution was not to have grown any pubic hair in the first place, so she’d stuck to her usual trick of just trimming and shaving to make sure it didn’t show around the edge of her underwear and left it at that.

Why was it that the only thing she couldn’t make sense of all the contradictory and stupid information that she’d been given was the one thing that really mattered, the actual act itself?

Belle stared at herself in the mirror. There was only one thing for it. She was just going to have to bite the bullet and go for it. She couldn’t exactly turn back at this late stage. In hindsight, she probably should have discussed this moment with Aiden just a little bit before it actually came down to it. He’d brought it up a couple of times in the run up to the wedding, after all, but the snide, horrible voice in her head had told her that nice girls didn’t talk about that kind of thing, and that Aiden probably only wanted to talk about it because he was excited about finally getting some after holding out for three years. She couldn’t even blame him, since he definitely wasn’t a virgin having been married once before with an adult son from that relationship.

God, Belle hated that voice in her head, because she knew that Aiden had only ever had her best interests at heart and now she really, really wished she’d actually had that conversation with him and got all her thoughts sorted out in her head before it was crunch time.

Still, no use dwelling on the past now. What was done was done, or rather, not done, and now she just had to make the best of it. She’d made her bed – well, her upbringing had made her bed for her – and now she was just going to have to lie in it. Literally. With her husband.

She shrugged off the hotel robe that she’d put on after wrestling herself out of her dress, and pulled the nightgown on over her head, smoothing it down and looking at herself critically in the mirror. If she wasn’t in such a state of mental turmoil then she’d still think that she looked the cat’s pyjamas in it, but as it was, she just worried.

Would she be desirable enough? This wasn’t even the most undressed that Aiden had already seen her; they’d been to the beach and she’d worn a bikini then, which he had most definitely appreciated. At the time she hadn’t felt self-conscious at all. Why was she feeling so self-conscious now? Maybe because at the time of the bikini, there hadn’t been the prospect of sex later.

What did it even matter whether she was desirable enough? This was a marriage, a partnership; she didn’t exist solely to be an object of lust for her husband. Did she? Why was she having these thoughts now, in the bathroom of the bridal suite, having got married just a few hours earlier? She’d spent so long looking forward to this moment, why was she getting cold feet now? She’d planned it all out in her mind… Up until the moment when things actually started to happen, and at that point her mind went blank.

She gave her hair a final brush and gave her reflection a determined nod. Show time.

Belle opened the bathroom door and stepped out into the bedroom. Aiden had turned the bright main lights off, the only illumination coming from the reading lamp on the right-hand side of the bed. Aiden himself was lying back against the pillows, chest bare, the sheets tucked in loosely around his waist, completely at ease. He sat up straighter when he saw Belle, his eyes moving slowly from head to toe and back again.

“Oh Belle,” he breathed. “Oh, my lovely Belle. You look so beautiful. I think I must be the luckiest man alive to have married you.”

Belle smiled. “No, I’m the lucky one.”

She moved a couple of steps out of the bathroom doorway, closing the door behind her with a snap of finality. She couldn’t escape back in there now, but she still couldn’t bring herself to move any closer.

“Are you all right?” Aiden asked. “You were brushing your teeth so hard I thought you were furious with them for some reason.”

“No, no. I’m fine.”

She wasn’t furious with her teeth. She was furious with her brain. The anger at her own indecision roared back into life and she crossed the room purposefully, climbing onto the bed beside Aiden and pulling him in for a fierce kiss, possessive and bruising, staking her claim. She’d kissed him like this before. They’d done a lot of kissing over the past three years; it was something that they were very good at. She’d kissed him with this same kind of hunger, and then she’d pulled away before she’d got overexcited and ended up going further than she intended.

When it had happened in the past, she’d always been a little annoyed at herself for pulling away, for sticking to the stupid mantra of saving herself for marriage when she’d given up everything else about her abstinence-only, purity-obsessed education.

Now though, she didn’t need to worry about that. She was married, she didn’t have to pull away. Neither of them did. She could kiss and touch to her heart’s content and yet, for some reason, she wasn’t doing so. She wanted to run her hands down Aiden’s back to his ass to see if he was naked under the covers. She wanted to do all kinds of things.

But there was that snide voice again, telling her that nice girls didn’t want that kind of thing. Belle wasn’t a nice girl. She’d long since established that there was no such thing as a ‘nice girl’ in the Storybrooke sense of the word. It was physically impossible for them to exist in such a way as to be perfect according to all the ideals. She should be a virgin when she got married, untouched and unsullied by any man’s hands, and yet she should still know what she was doing enough for her husband to be satisfied with her.

She let Aiden tip her over onto her back, feeling his lips trail down over her jaw and neck, and she carded her fingers into his hair, not trusting her hands to go anywhere else. He was about halfway across her décolletage when he suddenly stopped and looked up at her.

“Belle, sweetheart, are you all right?”

It was a serious question; there was a little frown line between his brows, and Belle cursed herself inwardly, because they’d only been at this whole ‘having sex’ thing for less than a minute and she was already evidently doing it wrong. Suddenly, everything that she’d ever read on the subject went clean out of her head in the face of blind panic.

“I’m fine,” she said brightly, hoping that she didn’t sound overly bright. She’d done that before, and Aiden could always pick up on it and call her out on it. “What makes you think that I’m not?”

“You’re tenser than a piano wire and you’ve got your legs clamped tighter than a vice. Just relax, my darling. You’re supposed to enjoy this, not endure it.”

_No, you’re not_ , said the snide voice in her head that sounded suspiciously like one of the nuns now that Belle really thought about it. _Nice girls don’t enjoy sex. Nice girls just lie there and stare at the ceiling and endure it._

She took a deep breath and let her legs fall open.

“Is that better?”

“No. Belle, please tell me what’s wrong. I know that this is your first time, we can go as slow as you need. Just please talk to me. I don’t want to push you before you’re ready, but I want to know what you’re ready for.”

“Nothing’s wrong!” There was no hiding the hysteria in her voice now. “Can we just stop talking and get it over with? Please!”

“No. Belle, this isn’t something to just be got over with. We’re not going to do it if you don’t want to.”

“I do want to!”

Aiden shook his head. “Belle, everything about your body language right now is screaming that you don’t want to do this, and I cannot disregard that. I’ve known you long enough to be able to read you like this. I can tell when you do want it and you then pull back because you want to wait. This isn’t one of those times.”

Belle pressed her hands over her face. This was not how she was supposed to be spending her wedding night, arguing with her husband about whether she wanted to consummate it, because the awful truth of the matter was that she just didn’t know herself what she wanted, and there were so many places that the indecision was stemming from that she couldn’t even pin point one particular thing that they could talk about and move past.

“Oh Belle, my love. Come here.”

Aiden sorted out the tangle of sheets that they’d got themselves into, getting Belle tucked up under the covers beside him and in doing so proving that he was indeed naked, and his cock was definitely far more interested in consummating their marriage than either of them seemed to be. He stroked her hair out of her face, wiping away her tears with his thumb.

“Please talk to me, sweetheart. This is your wedding day; you shouldn’t be upset like this.”

“This isn’t my wedding day, though.” Belle sniffed and reached for a tissue from the nightstand to blow her nose. “The wedding day was perfect. Well, apart from Madame Georgette’s weird ideas on intimate grooming this morning but I got through those all right. If we’d just stopped at the end of the reception then everything would have been fine. But this is the wedding night. This is the thing that I’ve been building up to for so long. I’ve denied myself getting closer to you for three years because I wanted to wait for tonight, which was supposed to be so special and perfect, and now it’s actually here and I can’t even tell what I want anymore!”

She took a deep, shuddering breath. It was all coming out now, all of her confusion, and she was steadfastly ignoring the snide voice telling her that none of it mattered because they had to consummate their marriage whether she liked it or not.

“Before, when we were just kissing on the sofa and your hands were on my thighs under my skirt, and I was desperate for you to go higher, but I knew I had to be a good girl and wait… I wanted it so badly, you have no idea. But now we’re actually here, and I don’t even know. Maybe I’m actually ace, and I was just using waiting till marriage as an excuse not to have sex.”

“I don’t think so. Not when you just told me how badly you wanted it before we got married. Maybe it’s just the pressure of the situation. You’ve been building up to this for three years. Longer than that, for your entire adult life. I think it’s natural that you’d feel some anxiety about it.”

Belle sighed. “Well, it doesn’t matter, anyway, does it? This is our wedding night. Something’s got to happen.”

“It really doesn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“Belle, there’s no law that says you have to have sex on your wedding night. Jefferson was so paralytic drunk after his wedding that he passed out on the bed before Alice had finished getting undressed and he didn’t wake up for ten hours. This isn’t the middle ages; we don’t have to give your father the sheets covered in chicken blood as proof that we did it.”

Belle raised one eyebrow. “This is Storybrooke. They’re only one step away from burning witches at the stake. Besides, what about you? You’ve waited for me for three years, it’s not fair to make you wait any longer.”

“Belle, even before I met you, I hadn’t had sex for over five years. I can wait as long as you want to wait. Contrary to popular belief I’m not a maniac, even if the locals do think I’m some kind of demon.”

Belle thought again of the tampons and the demon spawn and gave a little giggle. Gold smiled.

“That’s better. Look, it’s been a long and stressful day even without all this now. Why don’t we just go to sleep and talk about it more in the morning, when it’s daylight and we’re rested and the pressure of it being The Wedding Night is over?”

Belle nodded. At least it would give her time to get her thoughts in order, and things would probably seem much easier to deal with in the clear light of day than in the heat of the moment.

Aiden pulled her in tight against him, wrapping his arms around her and pecking a gentle kiss to her cheek. Belle pressed in closer, nuzzling into his warm chest. At least this was something that she could definitely do without fear of mental recrimination now. It was the first time they’d slept in the same bed, and she could absolutely see herself getting used to this, even if the sex part of it was going to take her a little longer to get to grips with.

“This is nice,” she murmured. “I like this.”

“Me too.”

“Please don’t let me go, Aiden.”

“I won’t.”

Belle closed her eyes, feeling the steady beat of his heart and his calm, even breathing. Yes, she was definitely the lucky one in this marriage, to have found a husband who was so wonderfully understanding. She dreaded to think what would have happened if she’d married one of the boys she’d grown up with in Storybrooke, raised to think that taking their wife’s virginity on the wedding night was their birth right.

She hadn’t intended to fall asleep quite so soon. She’d intended to stay awake and try to make sense of everything so that she could have at least a halfway decent conversation with Aiden in the morning.

But his arms were so welcoming, and his warmth was so inviting, and she felt so safe in his embrace that she drifted off entirely without meaning to.


	2. Chapter 2

When she woke the next morning, sunlight peeping in at the edges of the thick curtains, the first thing that Belle felt was hot. She’d rolled away from Aiden during the night, but even so, she hadn’t reckoned on how warm a second person would make things under the covers. She liked it; she’d never need to bring a hot water bottle to bed with her again at this rate.

She rolled back over onto her side, pressing in close against Aiden again. She could feel him hard against her thigh, but she wasn’t unduly worried. Thankfully basic biology had been one thing that she had managed to teach herself that had stuck, after she’d left high school with an only very vague understanding of how the human body, whether male or female, worked. She wondered if the school still had all the old textbooks, with the pictures of genital anatomy inked out in Sharpie to avoid the teenagers getting any unsavoury ideas about the opposite sex’s naughty bits.

Waking up beside Aiden was something that she wanted to do for the rest of her life. That was one of the reasons why she had agreed to marry him, because even if she hadn’t actually slept in the same bed as him before now, she had always known that it was something that she wanted to do in the future.

And she did want to have sex with him. The thought of waking up with him after a night of passion was a thrilling one. Even more thrilling was the idea of waking up and then going straight back in for a morning of passion.

The problem was that she had such vague and nebulous ideas about what a night of passion actually entailed. Fiction had been her only guide so far, and she had grown out of her wide-eyed, small town naivete enough to know that fiction wasn’t reality. You couldn’t get decent sex education out of a romantic novel.

The internet had proved slightly more helpful, but almost more contradictory than everyone in her hometown had been, and every time she went looking for more useful resources, she always felt that snide little voice in the back of her mind telling her that this wasn’t something good girls ought to be looking up. Good girls shouldn’t be interested in sex. Good girls just lay back and let it happen. Or, if they were very good girls, then they didn’t let it happen at all. As much as she tried to counter-argue, ultimately that little voice would win, and would send her scurrying to close the browser and go and stick her head in the fridge to cool her blush.

Storybrooke was a good little religious town. Since leaving it to go to university in Boston and never returning on a permanent basis, Belle had lost most of her religious beliefs when she had learned that what was practised in Storybrooke wasn’t so much religion as a way of scaring everyone into subservience.

Ever since she had left and had her eyes opened, Belle had never really called the place home again, but still felt enough of a connection to want to get married there among the friends and family that she’d grown up with. She thought that they’d have more of a problem with Aiden, since he was twenty years older than she was and was already divorced, and like he’d said last night, half of the town seemed to think he was some kind of devil who’d seduced their sweet Belle away from them.

The other half were willing to ignore that in favour of the fact he was a successful businessman and property owner who could probably buy the entire town three times over if he had a mind to.

As part of its good little religious life, Storybrooke was obsessed with virginity. Especially the virginity of its young women. It was almost creepy, how seriously they took their abstinence education. Belle had recognised that only once she’d left the place, and she wondered how many women who had lived their whole lives there had missed out.

Sex before marriage was practically worse than murder when it came to the many deadly sins, which had led to the current dichotomy in Belle’s head that she could not seem to reconcile. Sex was terrible, sinful, an awful thing that you should never ever do. If you had sex before you were married, then you were used, marked for life, sullied. You would never again be pure in the eyes of God.

And yet, sex was also something that was so pure, so special, that the entire reason you should never have it before marriage was because it was something so heavenly it should only be experienced with the person you would spend the rest of your life with. It was precious and shouldn’t be shared around willy-nilly with everyone.

Belle had never truly been able to get her head around the paradox of something being terribly sinful and yet heavenly pure at the same time, that something could be evil or good depending on whether or not there was a ring on your finger at the time you did it.

As if that wasn’t enough food for thought, there so many paradoxes when it came to the act itself; once you’d got past the marriage part and therefore sex was no longer evil but actually a duty to be performed in order to have children. Yes, nice girls, pure, virginial girls, weren’t supposed to enjoy this wonderful, heavenly act of love, after all. Sex was for making babies.

But not your wedding night, obviously. You had to be on contraception on your wedding night in case, shock horror, you were on your period that day. You couldn’t present your husband with a bloody mess, after all. That was supposed to come later once the hymen was broken and you were officially deflowered. No longer a virgin. No longer pure.

No longer meaningful in the eyes of the town.

You weren’t supposed to _like_ this act that you’d spent so long waiting for and preparing for.

As these thoughts were tumbling over and over in Belle’s mind, she began to come to the realisation of what had gone wrong last night. She hadn’t got to the bottom of it all by any manner or means; there were still going to be a lot of conversations to be had. But at the end of the day, she’d reached the crux of it.

She was scared, as simple as that.

The realisation took a huge weight of her mind. She had no idea what she was going to do with it now that she had come to it, but at least she could give voice to it properly. And if Aiden was the Aiden she had always known and loved, then he would help her through it. He had wanted to help her last night when she had been too emotional and overwrought to articulate anything of any use to anyone.

She smiled against his chest, closing her eyes again. It was a start, a baby step in the right direction.

A few minutes later, Aiden shifted and woke, pressing a kiss to her forehead before stretching out his arms and legs.

“Good morning, my beautiful wife.”

“Good morning, my beautiful husband.” Belle laughed. “We’ve only been married less than a day and we’re already one of those sickeningly happy couples from the commercials.”

“I’m very glad to hear that you’re feeling happier this morning.”

“Very much so. Yes. I’ve been thinking.”

“Good. Maybe hold that thought until after breakfast?”

Belle’s stomach gave an aptly timed growl. The reception did seem a long time ago now.

“Yes. Good idea.”

Belle reached for the room service menu as Aiden got out of bed and padded towards the bathroom, and she felt absolutely no shame in checking out his ass as he crossed the room. She had already accepted so much of what her upbringing had told her was sinful and she had no fears of going to hell. Appreciating her husband’s body was not something that she was going to feel guilty about. There were several reasons why she had married him, but the fact that he was very attractive was certainly among them.

They feasted on fruit and pastries, sitting on the end of the bed wrapped up in the hotel’s fluffy robes whilst they fed each other pieces of melon and strawberry, laughing with the sweet romance and silliness of it all. They needed to talk about what had happened last night, or rather, what hadn’t happened, but it wasn’t hovering over them like a black cloud, which Belle had worried it would. No, it was just a conversation that needed to happen. There was no blame on either side. No one at fault except the culture that had messed with Belle’s head so much.

It was only once they were full and leaning back against the headboard that Aiden turned to Belle again.

“Do you want to talk about it yet? We can put it away if you’re not ready.”

“No. I think the sooner we talk about it then the sooner we can work through it and the sooner it’s sorted. Otherwise it’s just going to be hanging over us forever.” She sighed, accepting Aiden’s arm around her shoulders before cuddling in against his side. “There’s a lot to unpack, and I accept that I probably should have talked about it before you know, the actual event, but there are some things that have become so ingrained that I just accept them for what they are. Not talking about losing my virginity being one of them.”

Aiden didn’t say anything; he just gave a small nod for her to continue with her piece.

“I think the thing that really freaked me out last night, the first thing to overcome, is that I was scared. I still am scared, and I’m not really sure how to stop being scared.”

“What are you scared of?” Aiden asked. “The first step to conquering a fear is always to name it so that you can confront it head on.”

“I’m scared of it hurting.”

“Sex shouldn’t hurt. If it does then I’m doing my job wrong.”

“Yeah, I know that it’s not supposed to hurt normally. I’ve read enough and seen enough to know that most sex scenes in books and films have the heroine screaming with pleasure, not pain. But this is the first time, and in books, it’s not normally so. The ones I’ve read with virgins are usually as prudish as I am and cut to black before the deed gets done. The first time always hurts. Breaking hymens and bleeding and the like. And you know, I’m not exactly stretched a lot. I’d had such a wonderful day, and I didn’t want to end it in pain.”

“Sex shouldn’t hurt,” Aiden repeated earnestly. “Not even the first time. The whole breaking and bleeding thing, it’s a load of bollocks. If you’re ready, then it won’t hurt, I promise. And if it does, then we stop, it’s as simple as that.”

“Yeah, but what if the fear of pain is the thing that’s making me not ready?” Belle thumped the pillow behind her in her frustration. “It’s a vicious cycle. And I think I am ready. I’ve been ready for ages, but I stuck to my resolution to wait till last night. It’s just this fear.”

“OK, maybe ready was the wrong word.” Aiden stared off into the middle distance, concentrating hard. It was his thinking face, the little furrow between his brows back again, and Belle had to laugh at it.

“Normally you’re so good with words,” she said. “You always seem to find the right ones when you’re making your deals. I’m sure you used to slaughter people in the courtroom with a well-placed word.”

“Oh, I did, which is why it’s so important to me to choose the right ones now.” Aiden gave a definitive nod as the correct words evidently came to him. “Ready probably isn’t the right word. Physically ready. Sufficiently aroused and begging to be touched. Then it won’t hurt. I mean, if you’re tense, then it will. But if you’re so drunk on love and orgasms that you’ve lost all that tension, then you’ll be fine. Think of it this way. When it comes to sex, I’m more like a Ford Fiesta.”

“What?” Belle looked at her husband as if he’d gone mad. “Aiden, you’re a Ferrari. Or Cadillac at least. I’ve seen your ass.” Which reminded her, in that moment, that Aiden still hadn’t actually seen her naked.

“I’m very flattered that you think so; but go with the analogy for a moment here. Considering I thought it up on the spot, I’m quite proud of it.”

“All right, all right.” Belle pecked a fond kiss to the end of his nose. “Going with the analogy. You’re a Ford Fiesta.”

“Yes. When you drive a Ford Fiesta, all you have to do is get in it and turn the key and you’re pretty much good to go. Are you with me so far?”

“Yes, but I still have no idea what this has to do with sex.”

“We’ll get there. You, on the other hand, far from being a Ford Fiesta, are more akin to Jefferson’s prize vintage Mustang convertible.”

“What, I only go out in summer when it’s not raining, and I get shut in the garage for the rest of the year? Sorry, sorry. Going with the analogy.” She giggled as Aiden gave a good-natured eyeroll and attempted to silence her with another kiss.

“No. Before you drive the vintage convertible, you take very good care of it. There’s a lot more to do before you can just get in and go. You check the lubricant levels, you check the fuel, you polish the mirrors, you check everything’s all right under the hood… Please say you’re with me now, because I’m not a car expert and I’m running out of things to say.”

Belle nodded. “So, what you’re saying is that I’m high maintenance?”

“No!” Aiden gave an exasperated sigh. “I just mean that when it comes to sex, it takes longer for you to be ready to go. You need more care and attention; you can’t just shove something up there and go. We guys have it easy. Get hard, insert tab A into slot B and ta-da, job done.”

“So, really, you _are_ saying that I’m high maintenance.”

“Yes, but the maintenance is all part of the fun, my dear, and the myth of sex being painful on the first go is perpetuated by people who are too young and-or inexperienced to realise that, or too damn lazy to enjoy the maintenance. I mean, you said yourself, you’re fairly well-read. Wouldn’t all these stories have been so much more boring if it was a simple case of mindless fucking all the time?”

Belle thought about it. “Ok, you’ve got a point there. So, as long as I’ve warmed up properly before the sexual work out, I’ll be fine?”

“Yes.”

“I really need to start reading these books more carefully. This is what happens when you get your sexual education from fiction.”

“All things considered, having seen your home-town, I don’t really think you can be blamed for getting your sexual education from fiction. As fictional as it might be, at least it’s better than non-existent.”

Belle sighed. “You really didn’t know what you were letting yourself in for when you got together with me, did you?”

“Belle, I love you. The bags and baggage that you come with are all part of that. God knows, I’ve got an entire luggage compartment full of my own. I love you, and that means I’ll overcome these hurdles with you.”

“I love you too.” Belle turned fully on the bed so that she could face him, cupping his face in both her hands and kissing him slowly, deliberately. “I love you so much, and I am so glad I married you.”

Feeling emboldened by the conversation, she unfastened the belt of her robe and shrugged it off her shoulders. Although she had no intention of going much further right now, at least she’d know if the sight of her sent him screaming for the hills.

“Belle?”

She took his hands and brought them to the hem of her nightgown, kneeling on the bed.

“I love you. And I want you to see me. All of me. Maybe I’m not ready for the sex part just yet, but I’m ready for the getting naked part.”

Together they pulled the nightgown up and over her head, and immediately, Belle knew that she didn’t have to worry about Aiden running for the hills.

“Oh my, Belle. As gorgeous as you look with your clothes on, you’re even more wonderful with them off. Come here.”

Belle was lost in a flurry of kisses, heated and frantic as she pushed Aiden’s robe off so that she could be skin-to-skin with him, his hands splaying over her bare back and running up and down her sides. She could have kept kissing him all day, but the energy eventually petered out, leaving them lying in a tangle of silk and soft towelling, nestled close together and basking in each other’s warmth until the time came to get dressed and check out of the hotel, ready to start their honeymoon.

There were still things to talk about. The voice at the back of Belle’s mind had not gone away, but at least her immediate fears had been quelled, and she knew that whilst this was going to be a learning curve, it was not going to be a painful one.

They had an entire lifetime to work through it all, and what better time to start than on a honeymoon?


	3. Chapter 3

“So, how do you want to spend our first evening in New York?”

They were meandering their way back to the hotel after an excellent meal, Aiden’s arm around Belle’s shoulders. There was certainly enough nightlife in New York to keep them entertained; after all, they were in the city that never slept. Belle didn’t want to go out, though. They had tickets to a Broadway show for the next night, and they’d already done a lot of walking today. What she really wanted to do was go back to their room for a cup of tea and some more kissing. She’d been sneaking kisses from him all day, and he had been providing them readily.

They had chosen New York for their honeymoon. Whilst Aiden would probably have been happy to take Belle on a round-the-world trip if she had expressed such a desire, Belle had wanted to explore more of New York ever since their flying visit the previous spring when Neal had been looking at colleges. He’d decided to stay in Boston in the end, but Belle had thoroughly enjoyed her time in the Big Apple; she wanted to see it at her leisure, without fitting in university visits around it.

Aiden didn’t fly well, so most of the journey had him pretending to be anywhere other than on a plane whilst Belle read and re-read her travel guides, picking out all the places she wanted to visit and drawing the most efficient routes around Manhattan on her map, to take in the maximum amount of tourist attraction for the least amount of walking.

She didn’t think that she was going to be able to see everything in the week they had booked, because a small part of her was hoping that they’d spend a decent amount of time in their hotel room as well. She was still nervous about what was to come, but something inside her had sparked back into life, the same spark that she had always used to feel before the wedding, whenever she saw Aiden with his tie off and the top few buttons of his shirt undone, exposing that lovely sliver of neck.

It was the spark that she had always tried to deny in the past, or at least put off until they were married. Now, she didn’t try to push it down. She still wasn’t entirely sure whether she ought to be feeling it or not in the first place, but she was married now. Sex wasn’t sinful anymore, so she was using that loophole to beat her snide voice into submission.

She thought back to the analogy that Aiden had taken such great pains over this morning. If she was Jefferson’s vintage convertible Mustang, then the ignition had just been switched on and she was purring.

There had been such a thrill in checking in as Mr and Mrs Gold, and Belle hadn’t been able to stop grinning all the way up to their room to dump their bags before heading out to begin their touring. They’d spent the rest of the afternoon exploring Central Park and the zoo, and now that night had fallen, Belle was still feeling buoyed up on the high of exploring new places and finding hidden gems.

Going back to the room would be a reminder to both of them of how come they were in New York in the first place. They were on their honeymoon, and there was going to be sex involved at some point. Aiden had said that he would wait for as long as she needed, but Belle didn’t want to keep putting it off, or she would never take that leap.

It wasn’t something to be gotten over with, but perhaps it was something that could be gotten started. She could take a leap of faith with Aiden. She knew that he would never do anything to hurt her; he had proved that admirably last night even if he hadn’t done so tenfold during their relationship thus far. She trusted him to know what he was doing even if she didn’t know what she was supposed to do, and she had even less idea how she was supposed to feel.

She was already in ignition, so maybe it was time to take the plunge and get started on the maintenance before she got into gear. Amazingly enough, the car analogy was really helping.

They had reached their hotel by this point, and Belle realised that she hadn’t actually given Aiden an answer to his question, several minutes ago by now.

“I think that we should just take it easy tonight,” she said. “Go back to the room, have some tea, get an early night.”

She left it dangling, hoping that Aiden would pick up on it.

“Oh, Belle.” He pulled her in closer and kissed her forehead. “You never fail to be remarkable.”

They entered the hotel and made their way back up to their room. They hadn’t unpacked earlier, just leaving the bags in Belle’s eagerness to get their exploration started, and it took them a while to get things sorted out and comfortable before they were sitting on the bed with their tea, channel hopping. Belle glanced down at the nightdress folded on the end of the bed. She’d not intended to wear it more than once, but she didn’t want the memories of last night to taint it for her. Even if everything had turned for the best in the end and she had gone to sleep happy, she would always remember the fear and frustration she’d felt unless she could make some more positive memories with it.

Aiden grabbed the remote and the TV winked out, leaving them in as much silence as there ever was in New York.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked. “You keep looking at your nightie.” He reached across and closed his hand over hers. “We don’t have to do anything.”

“I know. And I love you for that. But what if I do want to do something? You said this morning that the first step to conquering your fears was to name them, and I’ve done that now. So… What’s the second step?”

She’d ultimately been worried about the pain, but Aiden had assured her that it didn’t have to hurt. The other things she could deal with in time, but she didn’t want to remain a virgin forever. She wanted Aiden; she’d wanted him for a long time, and now she could finally have him, and not have to worry about hurting at the end of it.

“Well, shall we start by getting into bed?”

“That sounds like a good idea. At least whatever happens then, we’ll be nice and comfy.”

Aiden snorted with laughter and sat up to start unbuttoning his shirt. Belle grabbed her nightdress and was almost into the bathroom when she stopped.

“Belle? Everything all right?”

“Yeah…” She came back to the bed, pulling her hair over her shoulder. “Unzip me?”

She felt his lips brush over her shoulders and the top of her spine as he pulled her dress zip down, and she looked back at him and he raised his eyebrows at her. “Good?”

She nodded. “Yes. Very good. I, erm…”

The slight tilt of Aiden’s head prompted her to go on, and she turned around to face him fully, slowly pulling the dress down off her shoulders to leave her in bra and panties. Somehow, the act of undressing in front of him felt so much more intimate than just being naked with him. It was an act of vulnerability, uncovering oneself piece by piece in the gaze of another person.

Aiden smiled, a wolfish little smirk at the corner of his mouth, but his eyes were still soft and kind as he took her hands and kissed her fingertips before bringing them to his remaining shirt buttons.

“Fair is fair,” he said.

Belle’s hands were shaking a little in anticipation as she unfastened the buttons, and once his shirt was off, he made quick work of his trousers too, before resting his fingers on Belle’s waist and bringing them slowly up towards her bra band.

“May I?”

Belle nodded. He’d seen it all this morning, and she wanted him to see it again.

He reached around to unfasten her bra and pulled it off her, gazing at her bare breasts for a moment as the cool air hardened her nipples, and then he was laying her down on the bed again, holding her close like they’d done this morning before they caught their flight. Belle pulled her covers up to their waists, pressing in close.

“I think the first thing to do,” Aiden said, punctuating his words with kisses, “is to find out what you like. What makes you feel good?”

Belle shrugged. “I don’t know. Masturbation was up there with sex before marriage as one of the big no-nos. Touching yourself was as bad as having someone else touch you. There was always the worry that you’d get a taste for it and start seeking out such carnal pleasures elsewhere.”

Aiden sighed. “I’ve heard a lot about your town and its ideals over the last couple of years, but even now, I still don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I hear about some of the things that they taught you.”

“Believe me, this isn’t the half of it.” Since nice girls didn’t talk about sex, they also didn’t really talk all that much about sex education and what twisted version of it they might have received. Now that they were commencing on this voyage of discovery together, it was inevitably going to start coming up a lot more. “Considering I had a teacher who firmly believed that the clitoris did not exist because it served no practical purpose as a sex organ, we might have a long way to go.”

Aiden snorted, burying his face in the pillow to muffle his laughter.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I really shouldn’t laugh at the abysmal state of Storybrooke’s education, especially considering how it’s affecting you now, but like I said, the other alternative is crying.”

“It’s all right. I may be a virgin but I’m not completely naïve. I am completely aware of my anatomy and how it all fits together. I’m just not as sure how the various bits of it like to be touched.”

She remembered the first time she’d looked at herself in the mirror, trying to angle her little compact so that she could get a proper look at what was between her legs. She’d locked herself in the bathroom and sat with her back against the door as a double safety measure against anyone coming in, but she’d still felt certain that someone would be able to tell what she was doing in there. It had been after biology class with the inked-out textbooks, and she had been curious to see for herself what was down there.

Even though she’d just looked and not really touched, she’d been convinced for weeks afterwards that she was going to hell just for that; that what she’d done was somehow tattooed on her forehead like a scarlet letter, visible to everyone except her. She hadn’t taken another look until long after she’d left home and she was trying to trim her pubic hair. She was twenty then, and sharing a flat with two other girls, both of whom were far more open-minded than the entirety of Storybrooke’s population put together and who brought their lovers home to bed regularly, but she still waited until they were both out of the flat, and she still locked herself in the bathroom and sat back against the door to guard against intrusion. With two years of what she termed the Real World under her belt, she hadn’t felt quite as much shame as she had done the first time, and she’d allowed herself a little more exploration. She’d found her clit properly that time, and the touch had nearly given her a heart attack.

It was only now, coming to terms with her burgeoning sexuality and, moreover, being _allowed_ to come to terms with it, that she could recognise the feeling of intense and sudden pleasure for what it was.

Aiden kissed her again. “Well, we can find out together. So, where shall we start?” His fingers were dancing up and down her side, just grazing the side of her breast, and Belle felt her nipples pebble into hard points.

“Where you are right now seems like a good place,” she whispered. Aiden smiled, tracing one fingertip down over her breast and circling it around her nipple. Belle squirmed under his touch, allowing herself to just give in to the sensation and enjoy it.

He kept teasing her nipple for a little while, then skimmed his hand lower, down over her stomach to rest on her hip. Belle wriggled again. The spark of desire was back, and it was burning hotter than ever, railing against every instinct that told her she shouldn’t be feeling it. She wanted Aiden to touch her, to do all the things he’d talked about this morning to make her ready for what came next.

He slipped his fingers under the waist band of her panties and she responded by pulling them off entirely, kicking them out from between the sheets. A hand cupped her ass, fingers tracing along the line where her cheek met her leg.

Belle wondered whether this counted as sex. When she had been at high school, there had been all sorts of whispered conversations in the halls and the quad about what constituted going all the way, and whether you were still technically a virgin if you had done this or that thing. They weren’t heard often, after all, they were good girls and they didn’t talk about sex, but occasionally these things would find her way into her hearing, and they stuck with her. Certainly, in the eyes of the town, being naked in bed with someone and having them touch a place normally covered with clothing and considered obscene if seen without, well, that was definitely a black mark against one’s purity credentials even if nothing further came of it.

His hand slid back up her body again, coming to cover her breast and rub her nipple against his palm, and she gave a little gasp, but then the touch was gone; his arm resting lightly against her waist, nothing sensual in the gesture apart from the fact she was naked.

“How far do you want to go, Belle?” Aiden asked. “I’ll follow your pace, but I don’t want to push you too far before you’re ready.”

Belle sighed.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I know last night you said that this wasn’t something to get over with, but maybe I’ll stop overthinking it all if I just go for it.”

“As much as I admire your plucky attitude towards everything else you’ve shaken off from your conservative childhood, I don’t think it’s necessarily the best idea here.” He kissed her forehead, then her nose, then her lips. “I don’t want either of us to do anything that you might regret. Maybe it’s better to take our time.”

“I know.” Belle sighed. “I want this. I really do. I want to stop thinking about it and just enjoy it. More than anything I want to shut up the little voice that tells me I shouldn’t want it. It’s just not as simple as telling it to be quiet.” She paused, trailing her fingertips over his neck and shoulder. “What do you want?”

“This is about you, sweetheart, not me.”

“Not really. Sex involves two people, right? It’s all very well working out what I want and what I like, but what about you?” She bopped his nose. “Fair is fair, after all. We can’t have me having all the fun and you doing all the work.”

Aiden laughed. “Have I told you lately that you’re remarkable?”

“Yes, but I’m not averse to hearing it again.”

“You’re remarkable, and I love you.”

“I love you too. And I’d like to touch you.”

It wasn’t that she’d never touched him before. They’d been together for three years and Belle was a tactile person. Hell, just this morning they’d spent half an hour cuddled together in the nude. But touching him with the express intention of eliciting a pleasurable response, well, that was definitely new.

“All right.” Aiden rolled over onto his back, taking her hand in his and kissing the palm as his other arm snaked around her shoulders. “Shall we keep things above the belt for now?”

Belle nodded. They had plenty of time and it wouldn’t do to get ahead of herself. Better to take things slowly now and be sure that she was ready than to go too far too quickly and start freaking out again.

Aiden placed her hand on his chest and gave her that little smirk again. “All right then. Go wild.”

She danced her fingers across his skin, mimicking the same patterns that he done to her. She grazed over his nipple, grinning when it tightened under her touch and he gave a sharp hiss, twitching against her hand. It was good to know that he was just as sensitive as she was, and it gave her a little boost of confidence. If Aiden found the same things as she did pleasurable, then it gave her something to work from. Now all she had to do was work out what she liked. Probably best to keep exploring Aiden for now.

She moved across to repeat her touches to his other nipple, and he wriggled again. Belle let her fingers still.

“That’s good?”

“Oh yes. That’s good.”

She snaked her hand lower, over his belly. She knew that he was conscious about beginning to gain middle-age weight there, so she hoped that she wasn’t drawing undue attention where it wasn’t wanted. She dipped a finger into his navel and his entire body jerked in response, which would have been alarming had it not been for the expression on his face, obviously trying very hard not to laugh. Belle bit her lip as a thought occurred to her.

“Are you ticklish, Aiden?” Oh, she could have so much fun if he was.

“Yes. A bit.”

She wondered how she’d never known this before, and then decided that she’d had no reason to. She’d never been this intimate with him before. Over the coming days, they were both going to be learning all kinds of new things about each other’s bodies. Hell, Belle was going to be learning all kinds of new things about her own.

“On no account are you to use that against me,” he warned. There was a gleam in his eye, and she Belle knew that he already knew that his words would be entirely in vain. So, naturally she started tickling him, and then he was trying to bat her away, and then his fingers were on her own ribs and making her squeal, both of them descending into fits of laughter until Aiden finally silenced her with a kiss, his hands cupping her face and carding into her hair, the tickle war over with no clear victor.

Belle sighed with happiness, cuddling in close against Aiden’s side and bringing her hand back to his chest. It felt good to be able to relax and have fun like that, and she trusted Aiden not to go too far. Her main concern was pushing herself too far in her desire to get going. Maybe she could get Aiden to help her set the boundaries, and they could go just a little further each night, building up and up until they went all the way. That seemed like a sensible way of going about it. That would give her time to stop worrying about it hurting, and time to shoot down the voice that kept telling her that this was wrong.

Surely something that felt so good couldn’t be wrong.


	4. Chapter 4

When Belle woke the next day, Aiden’s arm still loose around her waist, she was incredibly hot and bothered for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with the warmth of another body in such close proximity.

She’d been dreaming, such a vivid and intense dream that she’d been convinced it was reality until the moment that she woke up, and she now had no idea what to do with the subconscious images that her mind had presented to her.

It wasn’t the first time she’d had a sex dream, but it was the first time that one had left her so very turned on.

She’d been walking barefoot through Central Park in the twilight, no one else around, and no sound from traffic or the city beyond; just the occasional hoot of an owl. She was wearing her wedding dress, the skirt bunched in her arms to avoid the mud and leaves on the ground. Someone was following her, and in her dream she knew who it was, and she’d felt no fear. She’d just kept walking, weaving in and out of the trees until her dress caught on the undergrowth and the skirt had torn away.

She wasn’t wearing panties under it, and she shivered as the cold night air teased between her legs, feeling almost like her own probing fingers.

She’d felt warm hands cup her bare ass cheeks from behind, hot breath on her neck, soft lips pressing open-mouthed kisses across her shoulders. Scared and aroused at the same time, she covered herself with her hands and turned to see who was following her.

It was Aiden, except it wasn’t. He was a faun, with dark goat legs and the little nubs of horns peeking out of his hair.

He’d knelt down in front of her, moving her hands so that he could sniff at her crotch. She’d stepped wider, opening herself up for him.

A pink tongue had darted out, but before he could lick, she’d woken with a start, the sounds of the city and the grey morning light bringing her back to reality with a bump.

She thumped her head back against the pillow. What the fuck was she supposed to make of that? Maybe she just needed a really cold shower and that would banish all such thoughts from her head forever. It was a good thing Aiden wasn’t awake yet; she really wasn’t sure how she was going to face him now. At least he’d been the man – faun – in her dream and she hadn’t been fantasising about flashing some other random stranger.

She scrambled out of bed, needing action in her limbs to try and chase the dream away, but she had no idea what to do or where to go once she was no longer between the sheets and she was just standing there in the middle of the hotel room, stark naked and staring at her sleeping husband. She cast around frantically for something to cover up with, grabbed her nightdress from the end of the bed and discarded it immediately as being too sexy, and in the end, she just high-tailed it into the bathroom, closing the door behind her as quietly as she could so as not to wake Aiden, and leaning back against it with a groan.

Yeah, a cold shower was probably going to be the best way to start the day. And maybe some mental floss, if only such a thing were commercially available.

She clicked the bathroom door locked and went over to start the shower, in doing so catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She didn’t look any different to before. She didn’t know why she kept thinking that every remotely sexual thought she ever had would be emblazoned across her face, but it was something that she kept coming back to and kept being proved wrong about. The only thing that betrayed her current train of thought was the pink blush rising in her cheeks and making its way down over her chest towards her breasts. Belle crossed her arms over her chest, covering herself in the glass. Her nipples were still erect and sensitive, aching to be touched, and she groaned, trying to think of something, anything, that would effectively kill this arousal.

Deep down, she knew why she kept thinking that her thoughts would show and why she was so afraid of it. All throughout her teenage years she’d basically been told as much, although not in as many words. Impure thoughts and all that. God could tell what you were thinking even if no one else did. That was why, even if her thoughts weren’t visible, she kept acting in a way that made it obvious that there was a significant degree of turmoil in her mind, making her seem even more suspicious. If Aiden could see her now, he would probably think that she was a complete lunatic.

What she didn’t know was how to break the conditioning that kept her worrying about it. Discovering her sexuality and learning what she liked was all very well, but if she was going to feel guilty and paranoid about it all the time, then it wasn’t going to get her very far.

Belle sighed, staring at the taps as she leaned heavily on the sink, as if they were going to give her the answer. Her eyes kept meandering over to her make-up bag, and her thoughts kept returning to the compact mirror. She closed her eyes, pressing her thighs together. No. No, no, no. Not now. Not when she was trying to make the thoughts go away.

She paused.

_Why_ was she trying to make the thoughts go away? She’d had a sexy dream about her husband; it was hardly a crime. Oh, fuck it, she was already going to hell anyway. In for a penny, in for a pound.

Belle grabbed her powder compact out of her make-up bag, making her way back to the door by instinct, sliding down the wood until her ass hit the cold tile. It took a while to actually pluck up the courage to open her legs and put the mirror between them, and she glanced down.

Her inner labia had always been full and plump, peeking out of her slit. Ironically, her lack of education had meant she hadn’t paid it any mind until she’d left home and started seeking out books that did not have the pictures inked out in Sharpie. Then she’d freaked out about looking weird, her first images of human vulva other than her own all being neat slits with nothing showing. It was only somewhat later that she’d realised that actually, she was perfectly normal, and she’d become comfortable with herself enough that she’d been ready to let Aiden see her.

Well, she had been until now. Now, her nether lips were flushed dark pink, and as she slipped two tentative fingers down to part them, she could see the slippery proof of her arousal on her skin. Granted, female arousal wasn’t quite as obvious as a man’s erection. No one would be able to see once she had clothes on. No one would be able to see when she didn’t have clothes either; unless they were looking very closely, of course.

All the same, Belle felt herself beginning to panic and she slammed the compact shut, closing her eyes. Despite the sensible part of her brain that sounded a lot like Aiden telling her that this was natural, that it was just her body’s reaction to stimulus, the voice that sounded like a nun was severely scolding her and as a result, all she could do was silently scream incoherent gibberish. She hadn’t had this problem last night when she’d got naked in bed with Aiden and they’d been touching each other. She’d been perfectly ok then. Why was she freaking out now that she’d woken up? Hadn’t Aiden literally told her, less than twenty-four hours ago, that her getting very wet and aroused was an essential part of making her first sexual experience enjoyable? Why was every brain cell shouting at her that this was wrong, that she shouldn’t be doing this, that she shouldn’t be feeling this way?

God, she hated her mind sometimes. Why couldn’t it just leave her alone to enjoy her life without throwing a ton of curveballs at her?

She threw the mirror across the room with a shriek of frustration, snapping her legs closed and realising only when she heard movement from the bedroom that her shriek had been a little louder than she’d intended.

“Belle?” She heard Aiden’s footsteps pad hesitantly along the wood floor towards the bathroom. “Belle, are you ok?”

“Yes!” She scrabbled to her feet, picking up the incriminating compact and shoving it back in her make-up bag, her haste serving only to upend the entire thing into the sink. “Oh, fuck it!”

She scooped everything out and back onto the shelf, with lipstick and foundation careening onto the floor, and she bit back a howl, deciding to just leave it alone rather than make it any worse. She couldn’t stay locked in the bathroom forever, she also couldn’t face Aiden, and to make matters worse, she didn’t even fully understand why she couldn’t face him. And she was still naked and still remembering her dream and…

She grabbed a towel off the rail and wrapped it round her chest before opening the bathroom door with slightly more force than absolutely necessary, causing her mascara to fall back into the sink.

Aiden was looking at her with a slightly amused but mostly baffled expression.

“Erm, hi.” God, she could already feel herself turning red again.

“Good morning.”

They stayed looking at each other for a few moments, until Aiden pointed over her shoulder. “Can I use the bathroom?”

“Oh. Yes. Of course.”

She moved out of the doorway and stared at the empty space he’d been occupying for a long time, before movement finally returned and she found the long cardigan she’d been wearing the previous day, putting it on over the towel and wrapping it around herself tightly, perching on the end of the bed and pulling her knees up to rest her chin on them. She focussed on her breathing, in and out. She just needed to put this behind her and move on from it. This wasn’t a bad thing. She was freaking out about it so much because ultimately, this was something she’d done by herself. Her dream and the subsequent arousal from it had come entirely out of her own mind. When she was with Aiden and he was the one making her feel this way, it was all right, but she still had not fully come to grips with the idea that masturbation was not sinful.

Aiden came out of the bathroom and sat down beside her.

“Are you all right?”

Belle nodded. The heat in her face was calming and she’d stopped freaking out. She could look him in the eye now, but if this was going to happen every time she got turned on, she was going to need a better coping mechanism. It felt like every hurdle she jumped just threw up three more further down the line; she was taking two steps forward and one-and-three-quarter steps back every time. Conquering one basic and immediate fear hadn’t helped, as it had just brought far deeper-seated concerns to the surface instead. It was almost as if her brain was determined for her not to enjoy married life; it was like a constant obstacle course or a series of what-ifs that never seemed to end.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I just… I had a pretty explicit dream last night and my brain wasn’t awake enough to deal with it first thing and managed to go into panic overdrive. I’ll be ok.”

Aiden stroked her messy hair back from her face and kissed her forehead.

“Dreams mean nothing,” he said. “I dreamed that there was a giant talking clam in the kitchen and it was making me solve riddles before it would allow me to open the fridge.”

Belle snorted. “I told you that you shouldn’t have had the clam chowder at lunch.”

“You did, and I ignored you, and I paid the price with giant talking clams in my sleep. What I’m trying to say is that it really doesn’t matter what you dream about, it’s no indication that’s what reality is like, or even that’s something you want in reality.”

“So, getting chased around Central Park by a faun who looked like you, whilst wearing the top half of my wedding dress but nothing below the waist isn’t something that I want in reality. Good. I’m actually quite glad to hear that.”

“I mean, you can probably extrapolate Central Park from that since we spent a lot of time there yesterday, and you can get me from that for obvious reasons, and you being half-naked from that for again, obvious reasons, but I think the rest is probably just your overactive imagination filling in the gaps.”

“You’re not mad, are you?”

“Why would I be mad? It’s just a dream, Belle. I wouldn’t even be mad if you’d said you’d had a dream about making mad, passionate love to Jefferson on the roof of the Mustang. Actually, that’s probably not a good idea considering it’s a soft-top.”

“Please, don’t give me any ideas, I’ll probably end up dreaming about that tonight and I’d really rather not. I love Jefferson as a friend, but definitely not in that way.”

“Ok, I’m sorry. No more talk of sex dreams. Let’s get some breakfast and visit the Statue of Liberty. But honestly, don’t worry about it. There are far weirder things to dream about.”

Belle kissed his cheek and went to take a shower; thankfully she’d calmed down enough not to want to make it a freezing cold one. Rubbing a handful of soap lather over her breasts, she remembered Aiden’s hands on her the night before, and she found herself mimicking his delicate fingers on her nipples, feeling them harden and pucker under her touch. Yes, she could say with certainty that she definitely liked that.

She shivered with pleasure and moved her hands lower, down to rest on her ass, like Aiden had done, like the faun had done in her dream, before shaking herself out of the reverie. There would be time for that later, and if she got carried away now, she risked getting swept up in another wave of self-recrimination. She washed between her legs quickly and rinsed off, shutting off the water and busying her mind with thoughts of the day to come. The Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Staten Island, and then Wicked on Broadway in the evening.

Beyond that, who knew? As long as she could keep reminding herself that it was something to be looked forward to and embraced rather than something to beat herself up about, she’d be ok. As soon as she got past the mental block, it would all be all right. Aiden’s reassurances were welcome and indeed very helpful, but when she was alone with her thoughts, it was harder to keep the intrusive and snide ones out.

They headed out to the diner on the corner of the block for breakfast; and Aiden ended up with a smudge of syrup at the corner of his mouth. Belle licked her lips involuntarily. In a romantic movie, this would be where the heroine leaned in seductively and offered to lick it away, but this was not a romantic movie, this was real life and they were in public with several people around them. God, life wasn’t fair. Just when she’d determined not to think about anything remotely sexy for the remainder of the day in a bid to keep her sanity, she was then thrown something like this. She was going to be seeing opportunities for innuendo in everything all day. Did her brain have an off switch?

Thankfully, Aiden wiped his mouth at that point and the temptation was removed. She could make up for it later, she figured. Back in the hotel room, where she could kiss and lick his lips to her heart’s content, and she absolutely would not feel any shame in it.

She hoped.


	5. Chapter 5

Gold had to admit that, prior to their wedding, he had not really given Belle’s virginity a lot of thought. Sex wasn’t the be all and end all of a relationship to him, and he’d been happy to wait for her. His own first time was so long ago and so unmemorable that he could hardly recall it.

In hindsight, he should probably have made more of an effort to discuss it with her so that they were both better prepared for the big night. In his defence, Belle had artfully shut down any conversation that he had tried to start on the subject, but he knew enough about her upbringing. He should have known that she wasn’t going to be magically completely relaxed about the whole thing when push came to shove.

The other reason that he had avoided the topic as much as Belle had was the fear that he’d end up patronising her. Belle lacked practical experience, but she didn’t lack knowledge. She was well-read; she didn’t need him to go back to basics. He didn’t want to treat her as clueless and naïve, but at the same time, the lack of communication between them on the subject had left him guessing him as to exactly how much she did know, and how many of the myths upheld by her incomplete education were lingering – her fears about hurting and bleeding on the first go being a case in point.

That was why he was so eager for her to set the boundaries of how far she was comfortable going at any time. He didn’t want to push her too hard and end up traumatising her, and he didn’t want her to push too hard in an effort to please him. He was sure she would have gone further last night; their current snail’s pace was at his insistence.

It was late into the evening when they got back to the hotel after the show, and Belle flopped back onto the bed with a resounding sigh of happiness and satisfaction.

“That was wonderful,” she said. “Normally, I’m one of those people who’ll always think that the book is better on principle, but I really enjoyed that. And I think there’s something special about seeing a show on Broadway. Well, apart from the price, of course.”

She held up her arms and Gold pulled her back into a sitting position.

“Aiden…”

“Yes?”

“Are you ok if we don’t do anything tonight? I’m exhausted and I just want to sleep.”

“Of course. We’ll take as long as it takes, you know that.”

“Yes, I know. But we’re on our honeymoon which sort of implies that we should be having all the sex, and we were kind of on a roll. I don’t want to lose the momentum and have to start all over again.”

Gold had to chuckle at that. “I’m pretty sure that sex is like riding a bike; it’s not something you forget how to do.”

“Hey, humour me here.” Belle batted his arm. “I’m still learning.”

“I know.” He leaned in to kiss her and Belle hooked her arms around his neck, pulling him in closer.

“I love you,” she said softly. “You’re so good to me. I don’t think that there can be many men as patient and understanding as you when it comes to all my stupid hang-ups.”

“They’re not stupid. Your feelings are always valid and should be respected.”

She let go of him and he began to get undressed.

“You’re not frustrated, are you?” There was genuine concern in her voice, her bottom lip worrying between her teeth.

“Not at you. None of this is your fault. I’m slightly exasperated by the town that you grew up in and their puritanical attitudes towards sex, though, I will admit that.”

“Well, that certainly makes two of us.”

“None of that’s directed at you, though.” Gold sighed, running a hand through his hair as he searched for the right words. “I’m just annoyed that it’s affected you so badly and knocked your confidence so much. You’ve overcome so much; we’ve laughed about all these ridiculous tales from your childhood in the past, and it’s sad that it’s had such a deep and lasting impact. At the same time, though, I don’t want to be too disparaging of it. It’s your home and your life, after all.”

“It’s my life, certainly, but I stopped thinking of Storybrooke as my home a long time ago.” Belle smiled. “You’re my home now. As long as I’ve got you, I can live anywhere. The moon if necessary.”

“Let’s hope it won’t be. There are no bookshops on the moon.”

Stripped down to his boxers, Gold went to brush his teeth; by the time he came back, Belle had changed into her pyjamas: a silky black camisole and shorts. He’d seen brief glimpses of them before when she’d stayed over in the summer, but something in his stomach still flip-flopped at the sight of her.

“You like?” Belle gave him a twirl as she headed towards the bathroom.

“Oh, very much so.”

Belle just grinned at him, and Gold got into bed, staring up at the ceiling and thinking about the last time he’d had sex with someone.

Cora had been an interesting rebound after Milah had left and taken Neal with her. It was a good thing that Neal had returned to his full custody when he had done and Cora had broken it off, unwilling to be considered as potential stepmother material. If they’d carried on much longer, the thing between them would almost certainly have turned toxic.

After that, Gold had sworn off women for life. Of course, all that had changed when he’d met Belle three years ago, but he’d had Neal cheering him on from the side lines all throughout his relationship with her.

Unlike his time with Belle, his relationship with Cora had been mostly sexual; they were completely incompatible in practically every other area except shrewd business sense. Even so, despite all the sex, he still felt closer to Belle, more intimate with her, than he had ever done with Cora. There was really no comparison.

He pushed the thoughts of Cora firmly out of his mind; he absolutely did not want to be thinking about his ex on his honeymoon, even if the thoughts were wholly negative.

Belle came out of the bathroom and slipped into bed beside him, cuddling in close. They were used to cuddling. Belle was an instinctively touchy-feely person and she hugged everyone; snuggling in close came second nature to her and it had never held any connotations of anything more. Even when they’d been curled up naked together on that first morning, they were enjoying the physical closeness more than anything.

Of course, having a naked Belle in his arms for the first time had certainly worked wonders for his own self-control. When she’d pulled her nightdress off and let him look his fill with only the slightest pretty blush rising in her cheeks, he’d been completely awestruck for what felt like an age.

He was glad that all her qualms about sex didn’t seem to stretch to nudity in front of him. Well, most of the time; she’d been rather out of sorts this morning, but Gold could piece two and two together with that one from what she’d told him of her dream and from the chaos in the bathroom. If he could convince her that masturbation was nothing to be embarrassed about and not necessarily something that should be hidden away, hopefully they would be well on their way to finding out what made her tick, and in doing so, making their moments together so much more enjoyable for the both of them.

X

Belle was still curled up close beside him when Gold woke the next morning, and he smiled. She could latch on like a limpet when she wanted to. For a long while, he just stared at the ceiling, waiting to feel her stir and wondering what would happen when she did; if she would have another episode like she had done the previous morning.

He brought his hand down beneath the covers to his cock, hard with morning glory and the closeness of a beautiful woman. At least that hadn’t freaked her out the first time she’d felt it. He wasn’t angry with her, far from it. Like he had said to her the previous evening, it was not their continued celibacy that concerned him, more the deeper-seated reasons for it, stemming from her childhood.

Gold was no psychologist and he didn’t have the first clue how to go about trying to break down the years of conditioning that Belle had been through. Looking at it in the cold light of day, he knew that he was just as out of his depth as she was, although in vastly different ways. He was stuck. It was all very well letting Belle take the lead and set the pace, but if she didn’t know what she was doing and was second-guessing herself all the way, then they would be in a constant stalemate. He didn’t want to rush her, but at the same time, it felt like she would probably need the guiding hand of someone more experienced to help her along and help her realise her needs and desires.

He shook his head, pushing unwelcome thoughts away and trying to see the positives as he slipped out of Belle’s hold on him and went into the bathroom. This would be a learning experience for the both of them, and they would come out of it all much stronger and with a much healthier sexual relationship. As opposed to the one they had now, which was non-existent and resulted in Belle having almost daily freak-outs. At least he knew that it wasn’t anything that he was doing that was causing her to freak out, more her own reactions to what she was doing. Or not even doing, just thinking. Honestly, some people, namely the ones who had taught Belle her most fundamental lessons about relationships, could take the whole ‘impure thoughts’ thing a little too far, in Gold’s opinion.

He looked in the mirror as he washed his hands, grimacing at what he saw there. He don’t know what about him had attracted Belle in the first place, he was simply grateful that she’d seen something worth pursuing, and he hoped to be able to keep that trust. She had not been at all covert about liking him in a romantic fashion. That wasn’t her problem.

Belle had overcome so much of her small-town upbringing that it seemed almost inconceivable that this one thing could have stayed with her for so long and affected her so badly. Perhaps it was because this had more of an impact on her self-worth, her moral value. Most of the other things that she had been taught and had since unlearned were so ridiculous and paradoxical that once she was out in the wider world and being influenced by a far different set of people and situations, they were easily forgotten about and explained away. Sex just wasn’t one of those things. It was a big thing that most people did, a phenomenon that was so incredibly widespread, yet so little talked about.

Even outside of Storybrooke’s closed-minded community, sex was still a taboo topic; just in different ways. It was still something that people didn’t talk about, but not because they weren’t supposed to be having it or even thinking about it. It wasn’t talked about because it just wasn’t. There was no rhyme or reason to it. Broken down to its base components, sex was just another thing that humans – that a lot of living creatures in fact – were able to do. It was neither a moral act nor an immoral one, it was just an act, and yet there was so much meaning attached to it. No wonder everyone was so obsessed by it.

His analogy the other morning seemed to have worked, so maybe the key to calming Belle down about the whole thing would be simply talking about it. It would be no good if, whilst seeking to break her free of the idea that good girls didn’t talk about sex, he didn’t talk to her about it. Communication was going to be key.

Deciding that staring at his reflection was making him morbid, he came back into the bedroom and slipped back between the still-warm sheets, taking Belle back in his arms just as she began to stir. She smiled up at him sleepily, and as she stretched, he noticed that her pyjama camisole had ridden low during the night, a little glimpse of nipple peeping out.

“Hey.” He leaned over to kiss her and she accepted him readily. “Did you sleep well?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Better than last night?”

“Yeah.” Belle sighed and ran a hand through her hair, giving a rueful little chuckle. “I did make a bit of a fool out of myself yesterday morning, didn’t I?”

“It’s fine. You’re still learning. Once you learn that there’s nothing wrong in what you’re thinking, or dreaming for that matter, then I’m sure that you’ll be fine.”

“I know that there’s nothing wrong with it. I mean, on the surface I know that. I can tell myself time and again that there’s nothing wrong with it, that there’s no moral judgement on being sexually attracted towards my husband of all people; but knowing something doesn’t necessarily mean that you automatically believe it, or that it makes it any easier to forget what you knew before. Uff.” She rolled over out of his arms and planted her face firmly into the pillow. “Maybe I need a brain transplant,” she mumbled into the cotton.

Gold touched her arm. “Please don’t suffocate yourself, we’ve only been married for two days.”

She rolled over again and smiled, carding her fingers through his hair, playing with the ends of it.

“What shall we do today?” she asked.

“I don’t know. What do you have down on our crammed itinerary?”

“Well, there are all kinds of places that we could visit. I’d love to see the Met. But I didn’t make any set plans for today. There’s nothing booked, nowhere that we need to be at any particular time.”

There was something hopeful in her eyes, perhaps a little questioning as well, but ultimately Gold thought that he knew what she was driving at. She just needed him to take the lead, and Gold needed to hope that he wasn’t misreading her signals.

“Well, I suppose that we have been very busy with sightseeing these past couple of days, and it would probably do us good to have a more relaxed morning. And even if we don’t get to see everything that you want to see during this stay, it’s not like we’ll never have the opportunity to come to New York ever again.”

Belle grinned, and Gold knew that he had hit the right note.

“So, since we’re both awake, did you have any ideas about how you’d like to spend our relaxed morning?”

“I was thinking about the, erm, vehicle maintenance analogy from the other day.” Belle’s cheeks were flushing a little pinker. “I was hoping that we might explore that some more. Maybe continue on from where we left off the other night?”

Gold nodded, finally chancing to adjust her fallen camisole strap, his fingers brushing over her nipple as he did so. He felt her twitch under his touch, the little bud pebbling under his fingertips.

“Yeah,” Belle murmured. “Like that.”

He continued to touch her nipple through the silk for a while, before chancing to skim his hand a little lower until it was resting on her hip, the tip of his thumb hooked inside her shorts.

“I want to find out what makes you feel good, Belle. I want you to find that out too. I just don’t want you to feel uncomfortable about it. So, if you’re not comfortable, just tell me to stop, ok?”

Belle nodded. “I don’t think that you could ever make me feel uncomfortable. I trust you.”

“I’m glad.”

He began to pull her shorts down a little way, and Belle wriggled them off. He slipped his hand back round to her ass, about as far as he had got on their first night in New York, and he squeezed her cheek gently.

“What are you thinking about?” Belle’s voice was low and full of desire, but the question was a genuine one.

“Huh?”

“You’ve got your thinking face on.” She pressed a finger to the bridge of his nose. “You’ve got that little frown line. I’m the one who’s supposed to be overthinking everything, not you.”

“Yeah, I am thinking.” As much as he wanted to find out what made Belle tick, he wanted her to be an active participant in that process as well. She had already been taught that sex was something that happened to her, not something that she should want to take an enthusiastic part in, and he didn’t want to perpetuate that notion even if what was being done to her was much more pleasurable than simply being rutted like an animal. “I think, maybe, it would be more… educational and enjoyable if you took the lead.”

“What?” Belle sounded unsure, her earlier confidence waning.

“Well, like I said, I want to find out what you like, and I want you to find out what you like too. Maybe we can do that together. If you find out what you like, then I can follow your lead. You know your own body better than I do, after all.”

“I don’t know about that.” Belle sighed, before finding Gold’s hand on her ass and lacing her fingers through his. “I think I’m flying as blind as you are here.”

“There’s no sin in knowing what makes you feel good,” Gold said. As much as he hated to be using the word ‘sin’ in the context of the bedroom, considering the problems Belle already had with its connotations, but it felt like the one that would resonate with her the most.

“I know. I just…” Belle tailed off. “Isn’t this supposed to be about two people? Something that I have to do with my husband and no one else? Part of me assumes that includes doing it with myself as well.”

“I’m not going anywhere. Just because you’re doing some exploring yourself doesn’t mean that I can’t get in on the action too.”

Belle giggled. “OK. I guess when you put it like that. I don’t know that I’ll be any good at it. I mean, you saw what happened yesterday morning.”

“I’m still not entirely sure what happened yesterday morning other than you had a sex dream involving fauns in Central Park, and the bathroom looked like a small bomb had hit it when I went in there.”

“I was trying to take a look, you know, down there. With my compact. And then I managed to overthink everything, like normal, and I caused a small make-up catastrophe.”

“I see.” Well, that certainly explained that in full and confirmed some of his suspicions.

“So, you can see why I don’t have any more of a clue what’s going on between my legs than you do.” Belle managed to keep holding his gaze for a few seconds more before looking away in embarrassment, but she didn’t pull away from him, her breasts still pressed up against his chest. Gold untangled his fingers from hers and gently turned her face back towards his.

“Well, maybe it’s something that we can work out together. And if I’m here with you, then there’s no need to worry about doing anything without me.”

Belle nodded. “No, I guess you’re right. I like this loophole.”

Whilst it probably wasn’t a good idea for her to be thinking of it as a loophole, Gold would take whatever progress in the right direction he could get.

“So, how do we start?” Belle asked.

“Well, it would probably be a good idea if we could see what we were doing.” Whilst most couples’ first times would be consist of fumbling in the dark – his own certainly had done – this was no ordinary first time, and maybe a clear line of sight would be better. He began to push the covers down off them and Belle helped, showing no signs of self-consciousness. She was comfortable in her own skin for the most part, it was just when she started doing things to that skin that her troubles began.

“Now what?”

“Do you trust me?”

Belle laughed softly. “You already know that I do, Aiden. I’d trust you with my life, and I definitely trust you with this.”

“OK. So, what were you doing yesterday morning? How were you, well, positioned, for want of a better word.”

Belle sat up, grabbing the pillows and pluffing them up against the headboard, then she looked over at him, looking nervous again.

“Aiden, will you hold me?” she asked quietly. “I don’t know why, but I feel safer when you’re holding me. I feel less like there’s some unseen force watching me.”

“Of course. You know, we can stop any time you want to.” Gold sat back against the headboard and Belle settled herself between his thighs, leaning back against him his chest with a contented little sigh and bringing his arms around her middle. Gold pressed little kisses to her shoulder and the side of her neck, and Belle gave a little grunt of pleasure.

“I don’t want to stop,” she said eventually. “I just don’t want to feel like I’m being watched when we do it.”

They stayed sitting in that aspect for a while, until Belle let her legs fall open and slowly brought one hand down between them. Gold watched over her shoulder as she parted her nether lips.

“I don’t know where to start,” she mumbled. “I’ve read so much, and I’ve seen enough pictures, but I still don’t know where to start when it comes to touching myself.”

“May I touch you?”

“Yes!” It was so quiet and so desperate at the same time, almost a plea, and for a moment, Gold didn’t move. This moment, touching Belle so intimately for the first time, well, it felt like it needed some kind of gravitas about it, not that any of his previous first encounters with women had had anything of the sort. Everything was more intense with Belle, and not just because of the long wait before anything had happened.

He slipped a finger between her folds, gently seeking out her clit and coaxing it out from its hood, rubbing little circles around the little nub as it swelled for him. Belle was wriggling in his arms, a little sob-like gasp escaping her.

“All right?”

“Yes. Yes, I like that.”

He kept touching her, listening to her moans and gasps, feeling every eager twitch of her hips, until her hand caught his and she whispered for him to stop.

“Are you ok?” He wasn’t alarmed per se, but he’d already decided that talking was going to be their biggest asset as they went on this journey of discovery together.

“Yes, yes, I’m fine, it feels good, it’s just… too good, if you know what I mean. It’s too much.”

Gold moved his fingertip away from her clit, rubbing along her folds. He could feel that she was getting wetter, not dripping with arousal but he was definitely spreading warm slickness around as he touched her, and the feel of it made his cock surge into eager life, demanding to sink into that wonderful wet heat. Belle shifted in his arms again as he continued to touch her, rubbing up against his erection, and Gold groaned with the friction. Belle glanced at him over her shoulder; her eyes were wide and bright with want and her face was very flushed, but she didn’t seem uneasy, not yet at least.

He gave a final stroke along her folds and paused at her entrance.

“Are you ready for a finger inside?”

She hesitated, which in Gold’s book meant no. If she wasn’t comfortable enough to say yes immediately, then she wasn’t comfortable enough, period, and she eventually shook her head.

“No. Not right now. I think about it, and I kind of clench up inside.”

“Ok. Not this time then.” He went back to touching along her folds, circling her clit, and she gave a little squeal and giggle of pleasure.

In spite of himself, Gold felt an immense swell of pride. This was supposed to be Belle’s time, working out what she liked and mentally noting it down for future reference, but he liked knowing that he was making her feel good and helping her learn. He was definitely doing something right.

“That’s good?”

“That’s wonderful,” Belle gasped. “I think my brain’s about to melt.”

She wriggled away from his touch, turning over in his arms so that she was facing him, going up on her knees to kiss him, her hands tangled in his mussed hair and her lips fierce and more dominating that she’d ever been, her tongue pressing insistently at his lips. He opened for her readily, pulling her in close. He didn’t know if she’d come or not, but even if she hadn’t, it was still a victory for her pleasure. There would be plenty of time for more in due course.

“What about you?” Belle asked eventually; once she finally let him up for air. “What do you like?”

Her fingers were hovering over the tented front of his boxers, and Gold took her hand, placing it on his cock so that she could feel the heat of him through the silk. She was flushing again, the blush reaching down from her cheeks and neck to disappear under her camisole, and for a moment Gold was worried that they had gone too far. Then her fingers were curling into the waistband of his underwear and she looked up at him, her bottom lip nibbling between her teeth.

“May I?”

“Absolutely.”

Together they pulled his boxers down and off, and Belle traced a gentle fingertip up his length, making him groan.

“Good?”

“You have no idea.”

She kept stroking him, letting Gold cover her hands with his and guide her movements, tightening her grip on him a little until every touch felt like sheer heaven.

“Belle,” he gasped. “Belle, I’m going to come.” Belle kept a hold of him, and he spurted thickly over their joint hands. “Fuck!”

For a long time, he could only sit there in boneless bliss as his cock softened in her grip, panting at the force of the wonderful release, before Belle let go of him and grabbed a handful of tissues from the nightstand to clean up.

“That was great,” he managed to garble eventually, although it seemed such faint praise. Still, all things considered, this was definitely a step in the right direction, and he had high hopes for the rest of their honeymoon.

X

It was their last night in New York, and in a way, Gold was going to be sad to leave this hotel room that had been the scene of so much discovery. Although they had still not officially consummated their marriage, they had come so far in the week and a half since that first night that the fact Gold’s cock had not yet been inside Belle was a mere technicality.

There was still a long way to go; Belle was still nervous about the whole concept, and it was true that he seemed to be doing most of the initiating whenever things took a more intimate turn, but it seemed that Belle was happy for it to be that way. If he initiated things, then she could follow his lead, and she trusted him to steer her in the right direction if she was floundering. He only hoped that he could continue to be worthy of that trust once the honeymoon period was over and they were settling back into a normal day-to-day life in Boston.

It was going to be strange having Belle in his bed. They’d cohabited for a while, but she had never yet slept in his bed. It was going to take some getting used to. He’d adjusted to having a second person in bed with him whilst they had been in hotel rooms; but there was something different about it being in his own home. His bedroom was his sanctuary, a place that had just been his for so many years now, and he felt a little nervousness of his own about welcoming Belle into that space. It would be a place for both of them now, and he was anxious that she should feel as at ease in it as he did. It was not the first time that he had considered keeping Belle’s room made up for her – not that he envisaged them sleeping apart at any point, but because he knew how important it was to have a space of one’s own in which to relax and be content.

He should probably be trying to get to sleep rather than thinking about the future; they had an early flight back to Boston tomorrow morning, but for some reason, staring at the ceiling was proving to be coming to him much more easily than sleep was. Beside him, Belle shifted. Was she awake too?

“Aiden?” That would be a yes, then. “Are you awake?”

“Yes.”

“Me too.” She groped around under the covers in the darkness, eventually finding his hand and squeezing. He wondered what she was thinking, and if her thoughts were wending in the same direction his were. Whilst they’d talked about sex quite a bit whilst they’d been in the middle of intimate encounters, it wasn’t something that they had really discussed all that much outside of the heat of the moment. It wasn’t something that he’d ever been able to draw Belle out on before, and he had always let her shut down the conversation, figuring that it would happen once they were married. As it was, it was still a subject she seemed to avoid like the plague.

He brought their linked hands up to his lips and kissed her knuckles, working his way down her arm to her shoulder, neck, chin and finally her mouth. One thing that had been firmly established throughout all of their time in bed together had been that if Belle was at all uncomfortable, she would tell him to stop, and he would stop. Right now, though, she wasn’t telling him to stop. She was kissing him back with a fervent hunger, her arms sliding around his back to pull him in closer, her legs falling apart to allow him in between.

She was wearing her wedding nightdress again, and Gold pulled the straps down gently to expose her breasts, kissing and licking at her nipples. She was so sensitive there, and Gold was more than happy to oblige the little wriggles and moans that he had come to learn meant she was enjoying herself and wanted more. He longed to make his way further down and taste even more of her, but when he had gone lower than her breasts before, she’d stopped him, saying that it didn’t feel quite right just yet. Maybe in the future, once they were much more comfortable with each other, he could revisit the prospect.

He slipped a hand under the hem of her nightdress, pushing it up as he stroked up her thigh, finding nothing beneath the silk but soft nether curls and the beginnings of a ready wetness. Pressing the tip of his thumb into her slit, he began to rub gently, coaxing out her pearl and circling around it, but never directly on it.

“Aiden,” she breathed, pulling him back up from her breasts so that she could kiss him again. “Oh, Aiden, that feels wonderful.”

As far as Gold knew, Belle had not yet had an orgasm. She had enjoyed what they’d done together; he knew that she didn’t have the experience or guile to fake pleasure so convincingly, but that moment of ecstasy proved elusive, as if she plateaued after a while. She didn’t seem frustrated by it, and Gold didn’t want to push the point, knowing that although he wanted Belle to feel the joy of an orgasm, a large part of his wanting her to have one probably played into satisfying his own ego.

He pressed a fingertip against her entrance, and she nodded enthusiastically, her hips giving a little jerk as he began to push a finger up inside her, stroking gently at her inner walls. It had taken her a while to get used to the sensation the first time he had done it, but now she was relaxed, and her body was clutching at him, welcoming him eagerly. He pressed a second finger in, circling them a little and making Belle moan as he continued to work at her clit with his thumb.

God, he loved seeing her like this, coming undone for him without a care in the world.

“Aiden, I think I’m ready,” Belle panted.

“Ready for what?” His heart began to beat almost painfully fast, not wanting to get ahead of himself.

“I think I’m ready to properly lose my virginity.” Her face was almost beet red, and Gold couldn’t tell how much of that was embarrassment and how much was arousal. Her bottom lip was worrying between her teeth again, but her eyes were bright and whilst there was a little nervousness in them, there was no fear.

Gold slowly pulled his fingers out of her and took his cock in hand, pumping his length a couple of times to coat himself with Belle’s slick juices, before resettling his weight and lining up with her entrance.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Belle nodded, and Gold began to push in, as gradually as he could possibly manage. He bit down on his tongue to try and ground him and stop him from going too far too quickly and hurting her. He had promised her that the first time wouldn’t hurt, and he could not go back on that now. When he was about halfway in, Belle gave a little gasp.

“Belle? Are you all right?”

“Yes. You’re thicker than your fingers. Just a bit. It’s not painful. Just… strange.”

Gold nodded, giving a little huff of laughter. Yes, strange was probably a good word for it. Still, it would probably be a good idea not to go any further, at least not tonight. The sheer bliss of being inside Belle’s wonderful wet heat was more than enough for him for now, and he began to pull out, giving quick, shallow thrusts that almost undid him there and then. She was tight around him but relaxed enough for it not to be worrying, and whilst she was breathing heavily, her pants a harmonious counterpoint to his own ragged breath, her face showed no discomfort.

“Oh Belle, my love. You are glorious, and I love you.”

His climax was hard and sudden, taking him by surprise. He hadn’t realised just how keyed up he had been by the prospect of being inside Belle after so much sweet anticipation. He gave a little grunt as he came down from the high, resting his forehead against Belle’s.

“Sorry,” he panted. “I should have warned you.”

“It’s fine.” Belle stole a kiss. “Now that, I was prepared for.”

He pulled out of her as he began to soften, rolling onto his side and bringing Belle with him. She was smiling, although her cheeks were still flushed, and he pushed a lock of hair out of her face.

“We did it,” she said softly.

“We certainly did.” Gold kissed her gently, little butterfly kisses to her lips and chin. “How do you feel?”

“Fine.” Belle sounded surprised by her own answer. “It’s strange. I don’t feel any different. Having sex for the first time was always built up as such a big thing, I suppose I was expecting something akin to an anime magical girl transformation sequence when I lost my virginity. But I’m still the same Belle that I was before.”

“Well, of course you are. Sex is just another thing our bodies can do. An enjoyable thing…”

“A very enjoyable thing.”

“…but it doesn’t change who you are. You’re still you, whether you’re a virgin or not.”

“I’m definitely not now.”

It was a statement, and it didn’t appear to have anything weighted in it, but as they lay in the cooling, Gold couldn’t help but wonder how Belle was feeling about the whole situation.

“I love you,” he whispered to her. “And no matter what happens, I’ll always love you.”

Belle kissed the end of his nose. “I love you too.”

She sounded happy, and for the moment, that was all that mattered. Whatever happened next, they would deal with it together. Gold was sure of it.


	6. Chapter 6

“Belle! It’s so good to see you! How was the honeymoon! Tell me everything!”

Ruby clapped her hands together excitedly as Belle entered the coffee shop and went over to their usual table. As always, Ruby and Mulan had her tea ready and waiting for her, and it was just at a perfectly drinkable temperature as she sat down and took her first sip.

“I want to know all the details,” Ruby continued. “I know you don’t normally kiss and tell, but this is a honeymoon. It warrants a proper discussion.”

Mulan grimaced. “Please, Ruby, we’re in a public place.”

“So? It’s never stopped us before. By now everyone in here should be used to the two of us discussing our sex life at every available opportunity. So, spill, Belle. What was the reaction to the lingerie of the century? Favourable, I hope.”

Belle nodded. “Very favourable, thank you.” She took a sip of her tea, wondering how to go about broaching the subject. She’d chosen Ruby and Mulan to be her confidantes for her problem: they were her closest friends in Boston, and as Ruby had already pointed out, they were definitely and unashamedly sexually active. She wasn’t normally around for the conversations that Ruby had mentioned; they had sensed early on that it wasn’t a topic that she was fully comfortable with, but since they’d helped her on the underwear-buying trip, her comfort zone with them was definitely expanding.

She decided just to jump straight in with both feet first.

“When I stopped freaking out about losing my virginity and we did actually have sex, it was pretty good. For a first time. I think. I don’t really have any field of comparison.”

Mulan and Ruby just stared at her for a couple of seconds, digesting the weight of her words.

“Oh Belle… Why didn’t you tell us that you were a virgin?”

Belle shrugged, although she knew, painfully, the reason why. Back in Storybrooke, her virginity had been her only defining trait, the only thing that she was measured on. When she had moved to Boston and started making new friends, she was determined to be seen on her other merits.

“Would it have made our friendship any different if I had?”

“Of course not, you silly goose.” Ruby leaned across the table and gave her a hug. “It’s your business when you do it and who with, but we could have helped stop you freaking out about being one on your wedding night. Why were you freaking out in the first place?”

“Look, you’ve been to Storybrooke. You’ve seen the place I grew up in and you know they’re a bunch of conservative nutjobs for the most part.”

“Yes. I did have fun arguing with the guy who was convinced that homosexuality is unnatural because it makes no sense for anyone to be attracted to someone they can’t reproduce with.” Mulan gave a contented sigh which was at odds with her truly wicked grin. “He was so desperate to get rid of me and so completely out of arguments that in the end, he just ignored me and started talking to a pot plant instead. It was the most hilarious thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Exactly. That’s the kind of place I lived for eighteen years. Now, just imagine being brought up into a culture that tells you that if you have sex with anyone other than your husband, you’ll burn in hell, and that sex is for baby-making, not for personal enjoyment. Well, not if you’re a woman, at least. They don’t seem to care too much if men enjoy it. It might have something to do with the convenient fact that for men, the baby-making bit is also the enjoyable bit.” Belle groaned. “Getting off topic there. Anyway. You’d freak out about your first time too if you had all that behind you. But it’s ok. Aiden talked me down off the ceiling. I was just hoping that you two might be able to help out after the fact, so to speak. I realise that I probably should have had these conversations before I got married, but hindsight’s twenty-twenty and as long as I know I’m not weird, then it’ll all help, right?”

“Of course, whatever you need. I mean, I’ve only ever had sex with women, so I’m not sure how much use I’ll be, but if I can set your mind at ease, then I will.” Mulan patted Belle’s arm. “You’re safe with us.”

“My first time was kind of meh.” Ruby scrunched her face up. “We were both virgins, both sixteen. We were ready, mentally, that wasn’t a problem. We were just absolutely shit at the actual ‘having sex’ part, due to lack of practice. So, it wasn’t exactly mind-blowing. I think that’s a good argument against waiting until marriage, actually. If it’s your wedding night, you want that to be special and really good, and it’s never going to be the magical experience that everyone raves about if you’re both fumbling over which hole his dick’s supposed to go in and you’re nervous about it being the first time anyway.”

“That was part of the reason why I was freaking out,” Belle admitted. “I was scared of it hurting, and I didn’t want to end my wedding day by getting blood everywhere.”

“Yeah. It shouldn’t hurt, I don’t know who started the myth that you just have to accept that the first time always hurts. Probably some dudebro who couldn’t understand the intricacies of foreplay.”

“That’s what Aiden said.”

“I knew you were onto a winner with him!” Ruby beamed. “See! There’s no need to worry with a guy like that taking care of you. I only had girlfriends for a long time after high school, but luckily, the second guy I had sex with was a doctor, an OBGYN to be precise, and he definitely knew his way around. The third was a mechanic, very good with his hands. The fourth was a doctor again, but he was a psychologist. Then I met Mulan and suddenly my love life was a done deal.” She leaned over to kiss her girlfriend. “I’m still in touch with the psychologist, actually, if you need therapy.”

“I don’t think my upbringing was that traumatic.”

Ruby just looked at her. “Belle, you literally just told us that you had a freak-out about having sex for the first time as a direct result of your upbringing. Archie’s a great guy and I really think he could help you. Better than us non-professionals at any rate. Ok, ok, I’ll leave it alone for now,” she said when Mulan batted her arm to make her shut up. “What do you need? Because I am quite happy to take you toy-shopping. In fact, I have been itching to do that ever since I met you, but I always held off because you seemed…”

“Like a prude?”

“Yes. Well. No, because that makes it sounds like a bad thing. But you know what I mean.”

“Yes, I know what you mean.” Belle shook her head. She was only just getting to grips with having sex and enjoying it in the first place; there was no sense in rushing headlong into anything just yet, as liberating as the experience might be. “I think I just need female friends I can talk to about these things who aren’t going to freak out themselves.”

“Oh, we will definitely not freak out. And we’ll try to make sure that we don’t freak you out either. Well, I’ll try to make sure that I don’t freak you out. Mulan’s sensible, she won’t have to try.”

Belle laughed. It was good to be back in Boston and have her friends around her. It had been good to reconnect with some of her old school friends back in Storybrooke who had not moved on, too, but the very fact of them still being there, still being steeped in that culture, meant that she could not talk to them about her plight. They’d end up with exactly the same reaction as she had done so many times herself. _Good girls don’t talk about that kind of thing. Good girls don’t think about that kind of thing._

She felt sorry for them in a way; it wasn’t their fault that they were stuck with such a faulty worldview as they were. Not everyone had her courage or means to get away from it. Part of her wanted to go back to Storybrooke and gather all her contemporaries together, shouting from the rooftops that it didn’t have to be this way.

With her declaration and all of the subsequent discussion out of the way, the talk turned onto other topics, namely the non-sexual aspects of the honeymoon. Belle had been able to take in most of the sights, even if she’d flown back to Boston thinking that she’d probably need another holiday to recover from everything that she’d done during the honeymoon.

Just as Belle was getting up to leave, Ruby pulled her back down and scribbled on a napkin, tucking it into her coat pocket. Belle fished it out to see that she’d been given Archie the therapist’s number.

“Just in case,” Ruby whispered.

Belle nodded. She hoped she wouldn’t need it, but it was always good to know that she had access to professional back-up in her mission.

X

It was still something of a novelty, sleeping in Aiden’s bed with him. In anticipation of their wedding, Belle had moved in with him three months ago, when the lease on her own apartment ended, but she had slept in the spare room. If it hadn’t been for all the kissing and teasing and the wedding planning going on all over the house, people would have been forgiven for thinking that they were roommates rather than an engaged couple. Now, all of her things had made the journey seven steps down the hall into the master room, with the exception of a few pairs of shoes that were a few too many to fit in Aiden’s closets.

Belle sat on the end of the bed, brushing out her hair and occasionally glancing over at herself in the cheval mirror. She was wearing her oldest and softest pyjamas, a pale pink camisole and long pants that had faded to grey with so much laundering. They were her favourite set, and she wasn’t looking forward to the day when they became so worn that she had to throw them out. She’d worn these pyjamas around the house so often that Aiden was used to seeing her in them, and she’d always felt comfortable wearing them around him.

Tonight, however, she was feeling different. Not uncomfortable, not at all. She couldn’t really describe it, but she knew that she wouldn’t have the confidence to keep feeling it if she hadn’t been wearing her favourite pyjamas, the ones she always felt safe in.

Up until now, Aiden had always been the one to initiate their intimate encounters. Belle had been happy to go along with him when he did; she had been very eager to agree with him when he suggested them, but she had never yet made the suggestion herself, always waiting until he brought the matter up. Tonight, she was going to turn the tables. Hopefully. If she didn’t chicken out at the last minute. She listened to the sound of Aiden brushing his teeth in the bathroom, remembering their wedding night involuntarily with a shudder. At least she knew that he wasn’t going to be hiding from her.

She was a married woman. There was no shame in her wanting to have sex with her husband. There wouldn’t have been any shame wanting to have sex even if she wasn’t a married woman. She still needed to keep reminding herself of that one. Trying to break the mental link between sexuality and morality was a lot harder than it seemed to be at first glance. Maybe Ruby was right and speaking to a professional would be a good idea.

She pushed the thought away for now; that was something that could be explored in the morning, when she couldn’t feel the heat rising in the pit of her stomach and calling out to her, telling her to get her man into bed and do something wonderful with him.

Almost on cue, Aiden came out of the bathroom, and Belle watched him cross the room to get into bed. Even in a t-shirt and pyjama pants, he still exuded an air of attractiveness and confidence. Maybe it was the confidence that made him so attractive. It certainly wasn’t vice versa; he had always been rather self-deprecating when it came to his own appearance. He hadn’t been able to believe when Belle had agreed to go out with him for the first time and his usual suave demeanour had pretty much instantly fallen as soon as she’d said yes, because he hadn’t had a plan for what to do in that situation, so convinced had he been of her imminent rejection. It was only now that she was working through her own confidence issues that Belle felt a new sense of kinship with him. Their circumstances were very different, of course, and their problems stemmed from different places, but the crux of it all came down to the same thing, a belief that had been instilled a long time ago that was very hard to break out of.

Belle slipped under the covers beside Aiden and switched off her reading light, plunging them into companionable darkness and cuddling in close. They’d fallen into their sleeping position so easily after that first night, although Belle had no intentions of sleeping just yet. It was easier in the darkness. She didn’t have to worry about looking like a fool who didn’t know what she was doing if Aiden couldn’t see her properly. The dark was kind to her.

She slid one hand down and under the hem of his t-shirt, resting her hand lightly on his stomach and feeling the little twitch he gave in response. She glanced up at him in the gloom, just able to make out his face.

She stayed with her hand on his stomach for a while, wondering where to go from there. Down towards his cock, or would that be too forward? Should she make her intentions known a bit more blatantly?

She kissed him in the dark, working her way slowly from his cheek, a little rough with the day’s stubble, round to his lips. He responded eagerly, opening his mouth to touch his tongue against hers. His hand came up to rest on her hip, fingertips drawing little circles on her skin under her camisole until Belle finally broke away from their kiss. She had gone into this with such determination to go for what she wanted, and now she just felt clumsy and embarrassed, unable to articulate her desires. It wasn’t that she lacked the language, nor particularly that she was having to deal with the snide voices telling her that she shouldn’t want this in the first place, let alone want to express how much she wanted it. It was more that she didn’t have the necessary gumption. She pulled her hand out from under Aiden’s t-shirt and let it fall back onto the mattress between them. Aiden kissed his way round to her ear.

“Was there something you wanted, sweetheart?” he whispered, his voice so soft and breathy that it sent a shiver of delight down Belle’s spine.

She nodded.

“Yes.”

“Tell me what you want, my love.”

“You.”

She felt rather than heard his little chuckle, and then he was pulling her over on top of him, running his hands down her back to cup her ass cheeks, kneading lightly through her pyjama pants. Belle dived in for another kiss.

She wasn’t sure how she felt about being on top. According to her research – well, according to the books she’d read – it was a popular position for women, but Belle couldn’t help feeling exposed, vulnerable. When she’d had Aiden’s warm weight covering her, she’d felt safe, hidden from whatever strange kind of angelic voyeurs might be out there checking up on her purity credentials. Now that she was taking the lead, there was far more chance of her shortcomings in the world of carnal pleasure becoming obvious. She knew that it made no sense in the long run; Aiden knew that the entirety of her practical knowledge came from what he had taught her already, so he wouldn’t be judging her for anything that she didn’t know.

That didn’t stop Belle judging herself, though. It was ridiculous, but she was still blaming herself for her lack of experience, wishing that she knew how to make Aiden feel as good as he made her feel. As much as she wanted to keep kissing him forever, because kissing was familiar territory and it always felt good, she knew that she was going to have to let them come up for air at some point, and she pulled away, sitting up a little and looking down at him. His hands came up to her waistband, thumbs hooking inside and continuing to draw little circle patterns against her skin.

“What do you want to do now?” he asked. His voice was so husky and seductive that Belle could almost feel her brain beginning to melt and dribble out of her ears.

The first words on the tip of her tongue were _I don’t know_. She had no idea where she was supposed to go from here, how she was supposed to vocalise it all having never really done so before. Aiden always liked her to talk to him, to tell him what felt good and what didn’t, not to be afraid to tell him if he was going too fast for her, and she loved him all the more for it, but now that their roles were reversed and he had put her in the driving seat, so to speak, she had lost all ability to form words.

“I want to touch you,” she said eventually, the sentence sounding stilted even as it came out of her mouth.

Aiden smiled. “I want you to touch me, too.”

“I’m just not sure how.”

“Well, putting your hands on me would be a good start.” Aiden sat up a little and pulled his t-shirt off before getting comfortable against the pillows again and taking Belle’s hands, placing them on his chest. “Tada.”

Belle rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean. I want to touch you how you touch me; I want to make you fall apart in the same way I do when your hands are all over me.”

“Well, I would suggest that you go with your instincts,” Aiden said, the words almost a purr.

It wasn’t the first time that she had explored his body with her hands, after all. It was just the first time that she was doing so with clear intent, as opposed to being caught up in the moment of intimacy. She slowly stroked her fingers over his chest, rubbing gently over his nipples and relishing the little hiss of pleasure that he gave, the buds tightening under her touch.

“Our bodies are not so very different,” he murmured. “What feels good to you will feel good to me.”

Belle kissed him again, pressing a line of soft little butterfly kisses down from his lips over his chin and neck, and down to his chest. She had always enjoyed his kisses to her breasts, although now that she was here doing it to him, she felt more self-conscious than she had ever done in bed before, and she pulled away.

“What’s wrong?” Aiden was immediately concerned, the worried expression in his eyes at odds with his heavy breath and the stirring hardness in his groin beneath her.

“Nothing, I just feel silly.”

“Why?” His hand came up to cup her cheek, stroking her hair out of her face as her eyes remained downcast, unable to face him.

“Because I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Yes, you do.”

“No, I don’t. I’m just fumbling along like an idiot.”

“It really doesn’t feel like that, I promise you.”

Belle gave a soft huff of laughter. “You have to say that; you’re my husband.” She sighed; she’d had such grand plans when she’d come to bed, and now they were all falling down around her. She didn’t even know why. This wasn’t out of a subconscious desire not to do it; she could feel the heat already rising between her legs and the sight of Aiden’s flushed cheeks and lust-darkened eyes certainly weren’t helping her keep her head. This was more out of frustration, wishing that all the knowledge was there already.

“Practice and repetition is the best way to learn,” Aiden said. He pulled her down for another kiss. “The more you practice, the better you’ll get, and then you will know what you’re doing.”

“I know, I know; but doesn’t it frustrate you? Being with someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing?”

“I maintain that you do know what you’re doing. You’re not naïve, Belle, just inexperienced. And why would it frustrate me? No, I think of this as a wonderful opportunity. May I?”

His hands had come to the hem of her camisole, and Belle nodded, letting him pull it off over her head in one motion.

“Teaching you how I like to be touched is a most… pleasurable… experience…” He punctuated his words with kisses over her bare shoulders. “One that I will gladly undertake for as long as necessary. There’s no exam to pass at the end, my love. We can keep learning for as long as you like.”

“But surely you’d prefer it if you didn’t have to teach me in the first place?” With his lips and tongue touching her anywhere he could reach, Belle was having rather a lot of trouble concentrating on what she was trying to say, and sure enough, her worries seemed really to be of secondary importance compared to what Aiden was doing with his mouth.

“Oh no, my darling Belle. This is just going to make the ending all the sweeter. Now… Where were we?”

He interlaced his fingers with hers, placing them back on his chest and moving them slowly down towards the waistband of his pants.

Belle took this as her cue, slipping her hands under his waistband and pulling the pants down his legs and off, throwing them off the end of the bed. For good measure, she shimmied out of her own as well, before making her way back up the bed to Aiden’s cock. It was flushed dark red, precum already beading at the tip, and as she drew her fingertip up the bulging vein on the underside, it twitched under her touch, Aiden’s hips jerking with the sensation.

“You like that.” It was a statement, not a question. She had learned some things over the course of their intimate relationship, and she was definitely learning to identify the noises that Aiden made when she touched his cock like this. She made very similar noises herself when his hands were busy between her thighs, and after all, he’d said that what felt good to her would likely feel good to him too.

“Oh, Belle…” His voice was low and gravelly, almost as if he was struggling to get the words out. She curled her fingers around his cock and stroked him again, eliciting a long groan. He was slumped back against the pillows, eyes closed, and Belle smiled to herself. Maybe she was better at this whole thing than she thought she was. “Oh, Belle, if you keep that up then I’m not going to last.”

She said nothing, but continued to stroke him up and down, touching one fingertip to the quivering head and smearing the pearly liquid there. There was something in the sight of him, so vulnerable and so undone, that made Belle’s stomach turn somersaults, and as she shifted her position on the bed, she could feel the wetness of her own arousal between her legs. Something told her that she shouldn’t be feeling such want at the sight of this; that it was somehow voyeuristic, but she pushed that voice to the side. She was enjoying herself too much and she had come too far this evening already for her old anxieties to start creeping in again now.

“Fuck, Belle! I want to be inside you, my love. May I?”

“Yes.”

She moved up to straddle his hips, and Aiden brought a hand down between them to help line himself up with her entrance, but she paused, the tip of him just inside her.

Being on top couldn’t be that different, surely.

She sank down onto him, slowly, carefully. It was a different angle; it felt deeper than it had done before, but she was not uncomfortable, and she began to move, rocking her hips a little. Aiden’s hips thrust up to meet her, his hands grabbing her ass for leverage, and she braced herself against his chest. There was something about this time that made everything feel more urgent, more heated, and she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Whatever it was, she wasn’t complaining. This was the kind of sex she’d read about in her illicit romance novels, or at least, she’d read as much as she could before she started squirming and blushing too much to be able to continue. This was what she would describe as _passionate_. Not that there had been no passion in their previous encounters, but it had been far gentler. This felt more like something out of a Harlequin.

Aiden’s fingers dug into her ass cheeks as he came, the motion of his hips stilling and his breath coming in ragged pants.

“Belle, I think you’re incredible,” he murmured as she raised herself up on shaking knees and let him slip out of her. “You’re a natural at this.”

Although some of her earlier misgivings were still there – she wasn’t sure that they were ever going to go away completely – Belle allowed herself a moment to preen. Yes, she was definitely learning.


	7. Chapter 7

If anyone had asked him, Gold would have said that he was both amazed by and extremely proud of how far Belle had come since their wedding. Although she still had a tendency to overthink things, she was ultimately curious and eager to learn. Whilst they were never going to be the most athletic of couples in the bedroom, she was still open to experimentation, and Gold was hoping that he would be able to take things a little bit further tonight.

He really wanted Belle to feel the glorious release of an orgasm, even though she’d said that she was happy as she was, he felt that she was missing out. So, he had a plan. Hopefully, Belle would be amenable to it. And if she wasn’t, well, he could put it away until another time.

“Gold. Gold! Earth calling Gold!” Jefferson waved a hand in front of his face and Gold snapped back into the room.

“Sorry,” he muttered gruffly, somewhat annoyed at being pulled out of his daydream so suddenly. “Miles away.”

“Hardly.” Jefferson raised an eyebrow. “From the looks of things, you’re about three blocks away in the library with Belle.”

Gold just glowered at him and returned to the intricate workings of the clock he had just taken apart to clean. Going into business with Jefferson had seemed like a great idea at the time, what with Gold’s knowledge of antiques and Jefferson’s mental encyclopaedia of vintage clothes and hats. They had made a nigh unstoppable team. Unfortunately, one of the drawbacks was that Jefferson could almost always tell what he was thinking. The man had turned it into an art form.

“Speaking of Belle, though, how is she? I haven’t seen her since the wedding. You two should come over for dinner some time; unless you’re still so stuck in your honeymoon period that to do so would scar Grace for life over the dining table.”

“Jefferson, please!”

“What, it’s not like we’ve got any customers at the moment.”

Gold just continued to glare at him until Jefferson chuckled and went back to his own work. Peace and quiet reigned supreme for all of five minutes before Jefferson spoke again.

“No offence to Belle’s hometown, but I can quite see why she moved out when she did. That place gives me the creeps. Too many nuns. I swear that there should never be that many nuns gathered in one place. Did you know that the collective noun for a group of nuns is a superfluity?”

“Storybrooke certainly does have a superfluity of nuns,” Gold agreed. What was more concerning than their numbers was the way that their word appeared to be law in the town, and how far reaching their views were.

“I mean, how do they get so many? It’s not like they breed by conventional means. Do you think they have a cloning machine under the convent or something?”

Gold had to laugh at the image, although he knew the reason. In a place like Storybrooke, where virginity seemed to be prized above all else, the nuns were lauded as paragons of purity. Obviously, there was a steady stream of Storybrooke’s young women seeking to earn that same respect and join the upper echelons of the town’s society, even if it meant giving up so much in return.

He had never been so glad that Belle had been able to get out whilst she could, that her naturally inquisitive side had led her to seek out a life beyond being a bride of Christ.

Their talk thankfully turned away from Storybrooke and nuns then, but a small part of Gold remained concerned. Whenever he and Belle went to bed together, something in the back of his mind was always preparing for Belle to freak out and shy away, despite the vast progress that she had made over the past few weeks. For all he had taught her, he was still not fully confident of his ability to put her mind at ease and the ghosts of her past to rest. Sometimes, when she was in one of her overthinking modes, it was hard to remember that he was not the cause of her hesitation and indecision. For all teaching her and watching her come into her own had been something of a confidence boost for him, there was something at the opposite end of the scale that always made him doubt himself, even if he knew that there was no reason for it, that the fault lay with neither him nor Belle.

It wasn’t something that he could discuss with Belle because she simply didn’t have the experience to be able to understand what he was feeling, and since the bedroom was one thing that he had always shied away from talking to Jefferson about, even before Belle, there wasn’t really much scope there, either.

Still, Jefferson’s suggestion of dinner was a good one; he and Belle got along well, and it would be nice for them to see each other again, and for Belle to see Grace. She’d always had a soft spot for Jefferson’s daughter, and watching them interact told Gold that if he and Belle ever had children of their own, she would be a wonderful mother.

“Actually, Jefferson, I think dinner would be lovely.”

“Pardon sorry what now?” Jefferson looked confused for a few seconds until he caught up. “Oh yes, the invitation. Only you can go back to something we were talking about ten minutes ago and expect me to follow your train of thought.”

“Jeff, I’ve long been of the opinion that you are in fact telepathic, if anyone can follow my train of thought, you can.”

“No, your brain’s a beast unto itself. Anyway, enough of that, you’re both very welcome as long as you keep your hands where I can see them at all times.” Here Gold rolled his eyes. “Is tonight good for you?”

A few text messages back and forth with Belle, and the date was set. Gold only realised after the fact that this would be the first time that Belle would be seeing Jefferson after the whole vintage Mustang analogy, but he trusted that it would all go off without a hitch. Otherwise Belle would be blushing like a tomato and giggling at inappropriate moments. Not that there were really any inappropriate moments for laughter when Jefferson was around; the man was a walking positivity machine.

Thankfully the car was not parked outside when they arrived that evening, and Belle was showing no signs of unease. It had been one of her big fears, that once she was no longer a virgin, people would see her differently, but since Jefferson had never known that she was a virgin before her marriage in the first place, there was nothing to fear in that respect.

Grace opened the door for them and waved them inside, dragging Belle off to enthuse about her wedding dress and get all of the gossip from the wedding. Jefferson had spent the entire time taking thousands of photographs, but it was no substitute to hearing about things straight from the horse’s mouth. Grace was in a princess phase at the moment, re-enacting royal weddings with her Barbie dolls left, right and centre. One of the advantages to having a tailor for a father was an almost never-ending supply of new dolls’ clothes to all specifications. Apparently, her latest commission was a miniature version of Belle’s own wedding gown.

Despite the good food, wine, and company, Gold couldn’t help being somewhat distracted throughout the evening. His earlier conviction was still clear in his mind, and matters weren’t helped in the slightest by the fact that Belle looked utterly ravishing today. She was dressed in the same bright green dress that she’d worn at the library all day, a black cardigan over her shoulders and her hair loose and curling around her face, but there was something about her that made Gold’s stomach somersault and his heart pound. Maybe it was the fact that when she leaned forward, the button placket of her dress gaped open a little and he could see the pale blue lace bra beneath, just a brief glimpse of the forbidden.

“You’re in dreamland again,” Jefferson said conversationally after Belle had been dragged from the table by Grace again to assist in the plastic re-enactment of her own wedding. “Thinking about having one of your own?”

“Maybe in the future. Not yet. I mean, I’ve got Neal, after all. Maybe I’m too old to be a father again.”

“You’ve only just hit fifty, Gold. There’s life in the old dog yet.”

Gold didn’t reply. He and Belle had discussed having children at various points throughout their relationship, but he had never confided those fears about his age to her. He had been so stunned that she’d chosen him in the first place, and then agreed to marry him, that he hadn’t wanted to rock the boat in that respect and make her wonder if perhaps her choice had been a wrong one.

He kept telling himself that they had time to think about it; that they needed to enjoy being just a couple before they welcomed a baby into their home. Belle certainly had enough on her plate to worry about, and she had already come so far towards shedding the long-indoctrinated notions that sex was for the purposes of making a baby and nothing else. He didn’t want to undo all of her hard work. Not yet. Not until after tonight, at least.

X

“Are you plotting something, Aiden?”

“Pardon?” Half-undressed, Gold whirled round on hearing Belle’s playful voice. She was sitting at her dressing table, taking off her jewellery, and there was a sly little smile on her face in the mirror. She turned to look at him properly.

“You’ve been wearing a little grin all evening; I noticed it even before we got to Jefferson’s. I thought that maybe you and he were in cahoots about something, but nothing happened whilst we were there. It looks like you’ve got a plan.”

“I have,” Gold admitted. It was the same plan that he’d been working on all day, even before the dinner invitation had been extended.

“Oh yes?” Belle raised an eyebrow, dropping her earrings and necklace back into her jewellery box. “And what might this plan be?”

“Well, I should probably discuss it with you first.”

“What is it? Come on, Aiden, put me out of my misery here. I hate suspense.”

Gold crossed the room towards her, bending down to whisper in her ear.

“I want to go down on you.”

“Oh. _Oh_.” Belle looked up at him; her bottom lip was worrying between her teeth in that nervous way she had, but on the whole, she seemed to be in favour of the idea, her eyes wide and bright. “Are you sure?”

“Oh, most definitely. What do you say? Can I have a taste of you, my lovely Belle?”

“Well, when you put it like that, it makes me wonder what I’ll be missing out on if I say no. I mean, your mouth feels wonderful everywhere else, why not down there too?” She paused. “Are you sure? I mean, you don’t have to.”

“I very much want to. And I expect no tit for tat reciprocation; if that’s what’s concerning you.” He had learned to read her so well over the course of their relationship, and even more so since they married.

Belle gave a slow nod, releasing her bottom lip from between her teeth and breaking into a smile. “I think I’d like that,” she said. “I think it would be… educational.”

There was something about the way her tongue rolled over the word that made it sound far more wicked than it had any business doing, and it went straight to Gold’s cock, making him stir in his pants already. He tried to tamp down his arousal and focus on the matter at hand. This evening was Belle’s, and he was going to do everything in his power to make sure that it was an unforgettable one for her.

She stood up then, shrugging her cardigan off her shoulders and looking up at him coyly through her lashes. “Would you care to unbutton me, Mr Gold?”

There was a blush rising in her cheeks as there always was whenever she was the one to be bold and make a suggestion. Gold kissed her, sucking her swollen lower lip into his mouth to run his tongue over it and distract her.

“I would love to, Mrs Gold.”

He took his time with her buttons, popping each one through its hole with careful and methodical slowness and getting onto his knees to undo the final few on her skirt. He looked up at her as he parted the two halves of the dress, exposing her underwear; God, she looked exquisite from this angle, like an angel gazing down on him.

She let the dress fall to the ground as he kissed his way up each of her inner thighs in turn, nudging his nose against the gusset of her underwear. He could feel her knees give a little wobble, and her skin turned to gooseflesh under his touch, and he grinned up at her from between her legs.

“I think we ought to take this to the bed, my dear. I fear you might collapse entirely if we continue like this.”

Belle nodded, giving a sound that could have been anything but that seemed to be ‘uff’, and she lay back against the pillows, watching Gold through narrowed eyes as he quickly shed the rest of his clothes and came over to the bed. His cock was beginning to bob eagerly in front of him, and he tried to ignore it, even as Belle’s eyes roamed over him with a hungry expression.

She took him between her thighs with no hesitation, her legs falling apart easily, so unlike the hesitance she’d had before. Her arms pulled him in close as he kissed her, carding into his hair as he made his way downwards, arching her back under his touch to let him get to her bra clasp. It took a couple of goes in the heat of the moment, but then he was pulling it off and tossing it to the side, lavishing attention on her bare breasts, tonguing at her pebbled nipples, and listening to the exquisite moans that she gave. He liked that she was vocal in her pleasure; it wasn’t something that he’d had to encourage all that much and he thought it was a good sign.

He began to kiss his way lower down her body, pausing every now and then to give her the opportunity to stop him like she’d done in the past, but she didn’t. He glanced up at her, looking at her sprawled on the covers, eyes half-closed in ecstasy, and he dipped his tongue into her navel, making her squeal and giggle and clamp her legs tight around him. Her ass wriggled and he was gifted with the sight of a little damp spot on the gusset of her underwear.

“Ready?” He slipped his fingers under the waistband, and Belle nodded.

“Yes.”

She was heaven; the scent of her excitement and the glistening of her juices in her fluffy curls made Gold groan. He decided to start slowly, to give her time to get used to the idea of having his mouth between her legs and to give himself, hopefully, some better chance of lasting out. He started with kisses to her thighs and mound, stroking a fingertip along the crease where her leg met her body, and the soft noises she was making told him that he was definitely doing something right. Finally, he parted her lips and darted out a lick along her cleft, relishing the gasp that she gave.

“Do you like that?”

“Oh, _yes_!”

He licked another stripe up to her clit, swirling the tip of his tongue around the little nub and making her cry out before slipping his hands under her hips to lift her a little and change the angle, lapping against her entrance. He felt her hands come down and tangle in his hair again as her hips bucked up against his face, and Gold smiled to himself, allowing a moment of preening. Yes, he was definitely onto a winner here.

He kept sucking and licking at her clit, alternating long laps and quick little flicks as he pushed one finger up inside her, stroking gently. Her hips were rocking more now, in time with the movement of his tongue, and her grunts and cries were coming more and more, getting louder and louder until she screamed out his name.

“Aiden!”

Her hands in his hair were almost painful, nails scratching at his scalp as her inner walls fluttered and clutched at his finger, a fresh flood of warm juices coating his hand and chin. He allowed himself a silent cheer of victory and slowly pulled out, looking up at her.

Belle was something else in the afterglow of her orgasm. Her chest was heaving, skin coated in a sheen of sweat, eyes closed, head thrown back. Every inch perfection. Eventually she let go of his head, her arms flopping out in a spread eagle.

“Now I can see why everyone goes on about how great orgasms are,” she mumbled as he crawled back up the bed, wiping her honey off his mouth before he kissed her again. She welcomed him readily, hungrily almost, her legs coming round his back to pull him in close. “That was wonderful,” she breathed, once she let him up for air and they were lying together as she came back from the high. “Thank you so much.”

“Darling, it was my pleasure.”

“No, I really think it was mine. But still…” She reached down to his cock, stroking him where he’d softened a little. “I think it should be yours, now.”

Gold needed no further invitation to push inside her, their bodies sliding together as she continued to hold him tightly, her chest pressed against his. As he came, buried to the hilt inside her, Gold knew that this moment was perfect, and no matter what might come next, he would always remember this wonderful evening. He hoped that Belle would, too.


	8. Chapter 8

When Belle had first received the call that her father was in the hospital following a minor heart attack, her first immediate thought had been to get to Storybrooke as quickly as possible so that she could be with him. The doctors had told her that he was in no danger at the moment, but he would be undergoing angioplasty surgery in the coming days to fit stents and try to prevent a more serious attack further down the line. Naturally, Belle wanted to go and see him.

Driving down the road from Boston to Storybrooke, however, she was beginning to have second thoughts. Not about going to see her father, obviously. More about going to Storybrooke in general. So much had changed in her mindset and attitude towards the place since she had last been there, even if it was only a couple of months. Married life had opened her eyes in more ways than one. Even though she had not lived there on a permanent basis for over ten years, she had still felt a vague sense of kinship towards the place where she had grown up.

Now though, she felt more like a stranger. Her only sentimental link to the place was her dad, and even then, her relationship with him had been a little strained ever since she had moved out. He had not begrudged her going to university. Storybrooke itself didn’t have any higher education options and at least Boston was nearby, not like moving to the opposite end of the country for UCLA, like a few of her classmates had done. Belle wondered if maybe they’d had the right idea and getting as far away from the town as possible was the right idea.

Staring out of the car window at the trees racing past and the raindrops dancing over the glass, Belle thought about the rest of her circle of friends from high school.

Ashley Boyd had been married two weeks out of school and had her first baby less than a year later, the week after she turned nineteen. When Belle had seen her at the wedding, she’d been pregnant with her fourth, and Belle could only feel sorry for her. She knew that Ashley probably didn’t want her pity and was perfectly content with her lot, but to have gone straight from school to motherhood with nothing in between, with no chance to experience adult life… Belle couldn’t have done it.

Ariel Del Mar was persona non grata now. She had been the best swimmer in middle school, far outranking any of the boys, and she’d wanted to compete at Olympic level, only to be forbidden from swimming once she arrived at high school. None of the girls were allowed to swim past the age of fourteen in case the boys caught sight of them in their swimsuits and certain impure thoughts and behaviours ensued. Ariel had snuck into the pool to practice at night, and nothing the school or the police or her parents could threaten her with would make her stop. At seventeen she’d run away from home to live with relatives in Florida, and now she was only spoken of in whispers, Storybrooke’s wayward daughter, such a disappointment to the town despite the fact she was breaking world records and winning championships left, right and centre.

Aurora Briar was still there; sweet and shy Rory who wouldn’t say boo to a goose and who only wanted to help people. She’d done her nursing training at the hospital, and had, amazingly, managed to avoid becoming a nun; and she was probably the only person Belle knew who had stayed in Storybrooke for their entire life and was even remotely well-adjusted now. Belle hadn’t had as much chance to catch up with her at the wedding as she would have liked, and she wondered if she would see her at the hospital now. Not that it was really the ideal circumstances for a chat between old friends, what with her father being in the cardiac unit and everything, but it was probably going to be the only chance she had.

And then there was Belle French, now Belle Gold, the final one of their quartet that no one could really pigeonhole as anything. She’d left the town in search of opportunity, which was a good thing in most people’s eyes; they weren’t blinkered enough to deny that Storybrooke was a small town without many prospects for young people. She’d got married, which was also a good thing; after all, the alternative to marriage was either spinsterhood (not advisable unless you were a nun) or living in sin, and they didn’t want that. Her father would never live down the shame.

She was also living in the hotbed of sin, crime and corruption that was Boston, and there were all sorts of rumours flying about the more acidic gossips about what she had got up to there before she met her husband. Especially after she’d invited a lesbian couple to the wedding! Still, everyone knew that Belle French was ultimately a good girl. Her father had raised her right. She’d gone to church every Sunday and listened with god-fearing ears to the promises of fire and brimstone for putting a toe out of line. She’d never questioned the status quo, and they had been willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Until she got married, she’d been a good little Storybrooke virgin.

But now, Belle was a virgin no longer, and the one thing that her worth had always been measured against whilst she had been growing up was gone. She had lost the only thing that had ever been deemed valuable, and since she was returning with a ring on her finger and her husband in tow, since everyone had seen her get married weeks ago, everyone would know. For all sex was supposed to be a private act, the fact that she had now had it was going to be very clear to everyone she met.

She tried to put it to the back of her mind and not let herself be bothered by it. After all, there were plenty of married ladies in the town and no one really gave them any second thought. Maybe it was just one of those things, that everyone made a huge deal out of your virginity until you got married, and then you were allowed to fade into the background and not have to deal with the scrutiny of the elders anymore. God, she hoped that it worked like that, but deep in the back of her mind, she knew that it probably wasn’t going to, for the simple reason that she was so self-conscious about it. The town had been so obsessed with her virginity – not just hers, granted, every other girl’s as well – that the fixation had passed down to Belle by osmosis. It was the only thing that she could think about right now, alternating with worrying about whether her dad was going to be ok. It was an intrusive thought that just ran through her head on a mantra in the quiet moments.

_You’re not a virgin anymore. You’re not a virgin anymore. You’re not a virgin anymore and EVERYONE KNOWS._

“Hey.” Aiden moved his hand off the Cadillac’s stick shift so that he could squeeze her tightly balled up fist, stilling the rhythmic pounding against her thigh. She had been so strung up she hadn’t even realised she’d been doing it. “He’ll be ok. We’re nearly there and you’ll see him in twenty minutes.”

Belle nodded, not saying anything. She couldn’t exactly admit to him that her dad wasn’t really the focus of her worries at that point. It would look awful if she were to say that she was more concerned with how the town was going to see her now than she was about her dad. Ultimately, he was in the hospital, he was in the best place, and there was nothing that she could do to make his circumstances any better. She knew that they’d do everything they could for him, so there wasn’t a lot of point in panicking unduly about it.

The sun was just starting to set as Aiden dropped her at the hospital entrance and went to find a parking space, and Belle just stared up at the foreboding building for a while. The Sisters of Mercy hospital was probably her least favourite place in the entire world. No matter what else happened here, she would never be able to extricate the hospital from the image of her mother wasting away in front of her eyes until she was gone completely. Belle hated that the hospital had not been able to do anything to save her. Hospitals were supposed to save people, but apparently stage four ovarian cancer was one of those things that people couldn’t be saved from.

She hated the hospital, she hated the staff – apart from Rory, obviously – and she hated, _hated_ the nuns. Whoever decided that nuns made good nurses was deluded. They were so sanctimonious, so holier-than-thou, with all their veiled remarks that if you were horrifically ill then naturally it was a punishment from God for living a sinful life, that you’d only brought it upon yourself.

As if Colette French had ever done anything wrong in her too-short life.

Belle took a deep breath and stepped inside the building, to get out of the rain if nothing else. It was just the same as it had been all whilst she’d been growing up. Same décor, same sepia pictures on the wall, same dust-coated plastic flowers in a chipped vase on the reception desk. The longer Belle lived in Boston, the more she came to the conclusion that Storybrooke was stuck in some kind of portal to the eighties.

The receptionist nun – receptio-nun? – was smiling brightly, and simply being in the hospital was making Belle vicious enough to want to smack her in the face.

“How can I help you?”

“I’m looking for Maurice French; he was brought in earlier with a suspected heart attack.”

“And you are?”

“His daughter. Belle Gold.”

“I see. Oh yes, I recognise you now. You should really come and visit more often; we haven’t seen you in these parts since your wedding.”

Great. A four-hour drive across Massachusetts and Maine and the first thing she got was a lecture for not having been back sooner.

“Anyway, Mrs Gold, Mr French is in the Shepherd wing, second floor, room three.”

“Thanks.”

Belle made her way through the hospital, clutching her coat in tighter around her chest in the hope that if she made herself look small enough, she’d be completely invisible, and maybe if no one could see her, she could pretend that she wasn’t here at all. The trick had never worked when she was a kid and she had no idea why she was wishing so fervently that it would now. She texted Gold the directions so that he wouldn’t have to deal with the receptio-nun and stood outside the door for a very long time, peering through the glass panel into the ward.

There were four beds but only two were occupied, one by a frail-looking elderly man, and the other by her father. Despite the fact that he was in a hospital bed and wearing a gown, he didn’t look all that much different to the last time that she had seen him at the wedding, although he was much, much paler than the florid red he had been at the time, with a bit too much alcohol inside him.

Maybe the bit too much alcohol was part of the reason for the heart attack in the first place. Moe had not exactly been stellar at fending for himself since his wife had died, and even less so since his daughter had moved out and stopped taking care of him.

She paused with her hand on the door handle. For some reason, she didn’t want to go in on her own. Even though this was very different to those terrible months when she’d been twelve years old and her mother was dying, she still didn’t have the courage to step into the ward alone. Maybe a nurse would come along soon.

“Hey.” She felt Aiden’s hand take hers and his lips brush her cheek. “It’s ok. I’m here. Shall we go in?”

Belle nodded, letting Aiden open the door and lead her inside, her hand gripping his so tightly that her knuckles were white. The horrible antiseptic hospital smell had hit her from the moment she’d walked into reception, but now it was increased tenfold and she had to wrinkle her nose against it. It brought back far too many memories, even though her mum had died in the opposite end of the building in a completely different room.

Moe looked over at them as the door opened, and he smiled weakly.

“Hi Dad. How are you doing?”

Moe filled them in on the medical details to the best of his knowledge, but her father had never been very good at taking all that kind of thing in, and Belle ended up surreptitiously reading the notes on the chart at the bottom of his bed to get a better picture of what had happened earlier in the day. He was out of danger at least, and whilst every surgery came with risks, the angioplasty in the morning would hopefully be routine.

“Ah, Mr and Mrs Gold, you’ve arrived at last. We were beginning to think that you weren’t coming.”

A nun bustled in and started fiddling with Moe’s IV line.

Belle was already in a bad mood simply from being inside the hospital, and she bristled at the nurse’s tone, all her muscles tensing ready for a confrontation. Aiden touched her shoulder lightly and nodded towards Moe. He was right, her priorities lay elsewhere right now.

Aiden turned to the nurse.

“Sister, we have driven from Boston, which takes at least four hours without traffic. We arrived as soon as we could.”

“Well, maybe if you’d stayed in Storybrooke instead of chasing the bright lights of the big city, you’d have been on the doorstep and your poor father wouldn’t have had to rely on the kindness of strangers to get him to the hospital this morning.”

Belle opened her mouth to protest at this lunacy, but Aiden was already there, and he was in full-on courtroom mode.

“Sister, I do not like your tone, nor your insinuations. We have come here to see my wife’s father, not to be abused by hospital staff during a time of family crisis. Now please finish your work and take your insinuations elsewhere, or I will be making a formal complaint to your superiors about your utterly shocking lack of compassion.”

The nurse left them with an emphatic huff, and Belle sighed. As glorious to behold as Aiden always was when he got into his stride, never having truly left the lawyer in him behind, she wished that it wasn’t necessary, and all the confrontation had served to do was make her want to get out of the hospital as quickly as possible.

He caught her agitation and gave her a guilty look.

“I’m sorry. You don’t need me to fight your battles for you.”

“No, no. It’s not that. I’d just rather that there weren’t any battles at all.”

“You’re right, this is neither the time nor the place.” He reached over and squeezed her shoulder. “I’m going to get a drink; I’m parched after that drive. Do you want one?”

Belle nodded. “Could you get me a coffee, please?” She was normally a tea drinker, but she was already on edge from being in the hospital and whilst tea would probably have calmed her nerves, she felt like she needed something to keep her alert and on her guard.

Aiden bent to kiss her cheek and left her alone with her father. Almost immediately, Belle wished him back again. She didn’t want to be alone, not with so many bad memories here. Still, she was here for her father, not for herself, and it wouldn’t do to be feeling so much self-pity when he’d had a far worse day than she had.

She forced a smile onto her face and began to tell him all the latest news from Boston, trying to pretend that they were just in their living room at home and not in this accursed white box of a place.

It was hard, and it was made harder still by her father continually correcting himself every time he started to say her name. By the third time he’d addressed her as ‘Mrs Gold’ instead of Belle, she was beginning to get frustrated.

“I’m still your daughter, Dad, I didn’t magically turn into a stranger as soon as I got married. You can still call me Belle. It feels weird to have you refer to me as Mrs Gold. I mean, you can call Aiden by his first name too. We’re family.”

“I know, but it’s not really the same, is it?”

Belle raised an eyebrow. “How is it not the same?”

“Well, you’re not my little girl anymore.”

“Dad, I’m nearly thirty, I haven’t been a little girl for a long time now.”

“Yes, I know you’re an adult, but now you’re married. You know how it is. You’re a woman now.”

“You mean I’m not a virgin anymore.” Belle felt the anger beginning to roil in her veins afresh. She knew that coming to the hospital had been a bad idea and yet she knew that she wouldn’t have been able to live with herself if she hadn’t come. She knew that this was going to happen; she had spent the entire car journey thinking about it. She was married now. She wasn’t a virgin. Everyone knew, and everyone saw her differently because of it. Her own father thought she was someone different now.

“Don’t be obscene, there are nuns here!” Her father sounded almost comically shocked by her sentence.

“They’re nurses, they should know how the bird and bees work,” Belle snapped. “Yes, I’m a woman now. Yes, I’ve had sex. How does that correlate to no longer being your daughter and to you calling me by my married name instead of my given one?”

“You’re not mine anymore. Another man’s touched you, and you’re his now.”

“I’m not property. I never was. I’m my own person.”

He’d just had a heart attack. She should cut him a bit of slack. She really shouldn’t be doing anything that could raise his blood pressure, but at the same time, hers was already on the verge of blowing out through the roof with the amount of sheer insanity that she was hearing, on top of the stress of being in the hospital in the first place.

She knew that her father was conservative and had very old-fashioned ideas when it came to women, because the whole town did. She hadn’t realised that he was quite so misogynistic until now.

“Bel-Mrs…”

“If you call me Mrs Gold one more time, I swear I will throttle you with that IV line.”

The elderly man in the other bed gave a wheezing squeak of alarm at that and Belle stood up.

“I’m glad you’re ok,” she said, even if, in that moment, she felt about as far from glad as possible. “Now, I’m going outside before I give you another heart attack.”

She stormed out of the ward, hearing her father asking what he’d done wrong as the doors crashed shut behind her. She made it halfway down the corridor before she had to stop, bend double and muffle her scream of sheer frustration in the folds of her scarf.

“Can I help you?”

Belle straightened up and spat her scarf out of her mouth, finding herself face to face with the Mother Superior – hospital matron and the last person on earth that Belle wanted to see at any point in her life, but even less so right now.

“I’m fine, thank you.”

She made to move away, to get outside and scream properly before she could explode, but Mother Superior’s hand on her shoulder stopped her.

“It’s Mrs Gold, isn’t it? Have you been to see you father?”

“Yes. I have seen him, and now I’m going away again, so if you don’t mind?”

She shrugged off the nun’s hand and continued her determined walk away from the cardiac unit, only to find the Mother Superior keeping pace with her.

“We haven’t seen you since the wedding,” she said conversationally.

“Yes, that appears to be a common sentiment around here today.”

“We were hoping to have news of a baby soon. We’d love for you to have your first child here at Sisters of Mercy.”

“Mother Matron, I live in Boston, I’m not going to come to a hospital a couple of hundred miles away to give birth, and to be honest, Aiden and I haven’t even thought about children yet.”

“So, you’re living in sin?”

Belle stopped in her tracks. “What? We’re married, how can we be living in sin?”

“Marriage is a sacred state entered into for the sole purpose of creating new life. By entering into it and willingly not creating new life, you are mocking one of God’s holiest sacraments.”

Belle shook her head. “You know, individually, all the words you just said made sense, but together in a sentence, they were gibberish.”

Mother Superior held her gaze steadily. “A woman who is neither virgin nor mother must, by a process of elimination, be a whore.”

Belle wanted to scream so badly. She wanted to crumple up and cry. The only thing stopping her was that she wanted even more badly not to give Mother Superior the satisfaction of knowing that she’d go to her.

“I have not had a good day,” she said, her voice low and barely more than a whisper, knowing that if she spoke any louder, it would start trembling. “My father has had a heart attack. I have driven four hours to come and see him in the hospital where I also watched my mother die, only for him to effectively disown me as a daughter because I’m now a wife and apparently we’re still living in the dark ages where women are chattel and can only belong to a man, and one man at that. And now, on top of that, you call me a whore because I dared to decide not to get pregnant as soon as I got married.”

“I speak as I find.”

In the movie of her life, Belle would have yelled ‘find this, bitch!’ and punched her in the face. Belle was not a movie star, and this was real life, so she just left the Mother Superior in the corridor and walked away, as fast as she could without actually running.

It was full dark when she got outside again, but at least the rain had stopped. Belle ran down the steps, raised her head and screamed at the top of her lungs, not caring for who might hear her or who she might disturb. What had begun as a bad day had turned into a living nightmare. She had never felt so angry, and at the same time, she had never felt so small, so worthless, so unloved. No one had ever made her feel so utterly and completely wretched as her dad and the Mother had just made her feel.

She wanted Aiden, but she’d left her phone in her purse and her purse on the end of Moe’s bed. Hopefully he’d come and find her when he got back with the coffee. Hopefully he’d bring her purse with him, because she didn’t want to set foot in that hospital ever again.

Belle crouched down on the wet concrete, burying her face in her hands as she burst into howling floods of miserable tears, replaying the events of the last few minutes on a loop in her head.

_You’re no longer a virgin. You’re no longer a virgin. Everyone knows you’re no longer a virgin. Everyone knows YOU’RE A WHORE!_

“Belle?”

The voice was soft and light and female, and the hands on her shoulders weren’t large enough to be Aiden’s. Belle looked up, wiping her eyes to find herself face to face with Rory, wrapped in a puffy coat that made her look at least three times her usual size.

“Oh Belle, honey.”

Without needing any further explanation, Rory put her arms around Belle and pulled her into a close hug, rocking her gently despite the awkward angle of them both being crouched on the wet ground.

“It’s ok,” Rory whispered. “It’s ok, I’ve got you.”

That was the wonderful thing about Rory. She didn’t ask what was wrong. She just accepted that something was wrong, so hugs and comfort were required. She’d always been the same back at high school. She couldn’t solve everyone’s problems, but she always let them know that she was there for them whatever those problems might be.

“I hate it here!” Belle sobbed. “I hate this place so much! I hate everything about it! I want to go home! I wish I’d never come!”

“I know, sweetie. I know you hate it here. Come on, let’s sit down before my knees give out.” She pulled off her coat and spread it out on the wet ground. Belle wondered if she was cold in just her scrubs, but Rory made no complaint, pushing Belle gently back onto the coat and sitting down beside her, taking her in her arms again and stroking her hair as Belle continued to cry. She wanted to tell Rory everything that had happened, but the words choked in her throat. Rory had lived in Storybrooke all her life after all. She’d been brought up with the same doctrine that Belle had, and now she worked with the nuns on a daily basis. What if she agreed with the Mother Superior’s summation of her?

What if the little voice in her head was right, and everyone did think that she was a worthless whore now?

A fresh wave of misery crashed over her; she must be making Rory’s shoulder very wet and snotty, but she had reach the despair horizon and could see no further past her spiralling train of thoughts. All she could do was cry; what else was there to be done when she’d been broken down so completely?

Rory just held her. She didn’t suggest that they go back inside, because she knew Belle well enough to know that inside the hospital would be the last place she wanted to go. She didn’t suggest that they find Aiden so that Rory could get back to work and hand off her caretaking duties onto someone else. Rory had found someone who needed help, and she was going to help, the way she always did.

Finally, Belle stopped crying. Perhaps she’d simply run out of tears. Rory passed her a handful of tissues and she blew her nose.

“Sorry about your top,” she mumbled.

“Oh, it’s nothing. I’ve been covered in way worse than tears and snot. Are you feeling any better now?”

Belle shook her head. “Nope. Not at all. I’m still miserable and I still hate everything. Apart from you. And Aiden. Do you need to be somewhere? I don’t want you to get into trouble on my account.”

“I can handle it. They won’t know I’m gone; they never notice where I am at the best of times. Do you want to talk about it?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know. I… I grew up here, and it’s supposed to be my home, but I’ve never felt so alone here.”

“You’re not alone, Belle. As long as you’re here and I’m here, you’ve got me, no matter what.”

Belle gave a slow nod, slumping her head back against Rory’s shoulder. Rory would understand, wouldn’t she?

“Rory…”

“Yes, Belle?”

“What’s a whore, to you?”

“A whore is someone who accepts money in exchange for sexual favours, I guess.” Rory wrinkled her nose. “I don’t like that word. It’s so judgemental. And overused by nuns.”

For the first time since she entered the hospital, Belle was beginning to see some light at the end of the tunnel.

“Belle? Are you all right, love?”

Belle looked over her shoulder to see Aiden coming down the steps carrying two cardboard coffee cups, her purse slung over his shoulder, and she jumped to her feet, never so glad to see him as she was now. He handed her one of the cups and she unhooked her bag from his arm, taking a long slug of the sludgy brew to fortify herself before replying.

“No. I’m not. Can we go, please? I’ll tell you everything later, I just can’t be here right now.”

“Of course.”

Belle turned to Rory, who was putting her huge coat back on.

“Thank you so much.” She hugged her friend again. “You have no idea how much this means.”

“Any time, sweetie. I’m always here.”

Rory made her way into the hospital and Aiden led the way towards the car. Belle sat back in the passenger seat with a groan, closing her eyes. She couldn’t start crying again, she’d already cried herself dry with Rory, but the words kept coming back into her mind, playing themselves on a loop over and over again; she couldn’t stop herself from reliving the confrontation with the Mother Superior.

_Not a virgin. Not a mother. Whore._

Aiden leaned across and kissed her blotchy cheek, then gently turned her face towards him so that he could kiss her lips.

“You’ll be all right,” he promised. “I’ll help you.”

They checked in at the inn; Belle had no desire to stay in her father’s house after their conversation; suddenly her childhood home held entirely new and unwelcome connotations for her. They’d just packed the one bag between them, needing to get away quickly and not anticipating spending more than a couple of nights away. Right now, Belle would have been happy not to spend any nights there at all.

“Huh.” Aiden looked around at the room; enough chintz to make their eyes water and a truly hideous carpet that looked like it had come over with the pilgrims. “Yes, I am very glad we stayed in the hotel out of town where we had the reception when we got married.”

Belle looked at the twin beds. “We asked for a double room, right?”

Aiden nodded. “We did. Shall I go back to reception?”

Belle groaned, sitting down on the end of one of the beds and shaking her head.

“No. It’s not worth it. Believe me, I know this town. I’ve never stayed here at the inn before because, well, I had my dad’s house, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find that there aren’t any double beds in the place. Because even if a couple signs in as Mr-and-Mrs So-and-So, you can’t guarantee that they’re actually married. And if they’re wearing wedding rings, you can’t guarantee that they’re actually married to each other. Got to do everything you can to prevent sin from creeping in.” She lay back against the flowery covers; they felt damp and mildewed. “I hate this town.”

Aiden kicked off his shoes and lay down on the narrow single bed beside her. “Because of course, it’s physically impossible for two people to sleep together in a single bed.”

Belle gave a snort of laughter and rolled over to bury her face in against his chest.

“Please hold me, Aiden.”

“Whatever you need, love.”

He put his arms around her, resting his chin down into the messy nest of curls on top of her head.

“The Mother Superior called me a whore,” she said quietly. Maybe she was hoping that he wouldn’t hear her, but she needed to say the words.

“What?” Aiden pulled away from her a little, looking down into her face with an expression of furious incredulity. “Sorry, what did she say?”

“She said I wasn’t a virgin or a mother, so I must be a whore.”

“That’s absurd! Preposterous! That’s the most insane non-logic I’ve ever heard, and I’ve heard some ridiculous shit in my time.”

He was halfway up off the bed and for a moment, Belle genuinely thought that he was about to go out and hunt down the Mother Superior.

She pulled him back down again.

“I know it’s stupid. And you know it’s stupid. Because you’re a normal person from the world outside this weird micro-society that calls itself a functioning town. But she’s not the only person in this town. What if that’s the prevailing view? What if everyone thinks like that? What if everyone thinks I’m a whore?”

“Oh, Belle.” Aiden didn’t have a ready answer for that one. She knew that he wouldn’t, because he hadn’t spent enough time in Storybrooke to know what the people were like. She didn’t even know why she’d asked it of him, other than the screaming need to share what was going through her mind with someone she knew would never, ever judge her. “Oh Belle, my love, I wish I knew how to put your mind at ease, but I don’t.”

He put his arms around her, pulling her in close against his chest and letting her bury her face in against him. They stayed like that for a long time, cuddling together on the narrow bed as Belle wallowed in her utter misery. Her father was in the hospital and about to have surgery the next day. All her thoughts should have been occupied with him, and she was being selfish to be so worried about herself, which made her feel even worse. If she didn’t know better – although maybe she did – she’d say that the Mother Superior had made her acidic comments with such perfect timing so that Belle would feel completely and woefully horrible in a double dose. She didn’t know why the matron would do such a thing, but at the same time, there was already so much that she didn’t understand about how the nuns worked, and how come their ideas had ended up having such a stranglehold on the town.

She wanted to feel at home here. Although she had told Aiden that Storybrooke had not been her home for a long time, that didn’t mean that she didn’t want it to be. The place that she grew up in, the place that she associated with her mother, it should have been a place filled with good memories, a place where she ought to be welcomed.

She was welcome no longer; the Mother Superior had made that clear. Even though Belle had played by most of their obscure rules, even though she’d kept herself so virginial and pure till she got married, she still wasn’t good enough to belong in this town. There was still a boundary of womanhood that she had yet to reach, and until she reached it, she was worth less than everyone else. Before she’d been married, she at least had her virtue to show as a badge of honour. Now she had no virtue and nothing to show for it. The thing that had made her valuable was gone. The town was no longer interested in her, no longer had a place for her.

It was stupid to measure a person’s value by what they did with their private parts. Belle knew that. Knowing it didn’t make this strange ostracising any easier to bear, though.

She felt like crying again; her head was pounding with the need of emotional release even though she’d just spent what felt like hours crying on Rory’s shoulder, but the tears wouldn’t come. She felt cold and numb, even with Aiden’s arms around her and his warm weight there, pressed against her body. In the course of one day, everything had turned upside down, and she didn’t know what to do with it. The rug had been swept out from under her feet with the revelation of how her father really saw her, how the rest of Storybrooke really saw her. Although she had not lost her father, and she dreaded to think how she would be feeling if she had done, she felt like she had lost her home entirely.

And despite everything, despite Aiden’s soft murmurings that everything was going to be ok, and she shouldn’t take any notice of what the small minds in Storybrooke thought, she couldn’t help thinking that she had brought this entirely upon herself.


	9. Chapter 9

Over the course of their relationship, Gold had found out a lot about Belle’s hometown and the culture that she had been brought up in. Most of the time, they’d managed to laugh about some of Storybrooke’s more ridiculous ideas. Sex was one thing he’d never managed to get her to laugh about before they were married, and something he’d only just managed to get her relaxed enough to slightly giggle about since.

Now, he was beginning to think that she might never be light-hearted about it again.

He’d always tried to respect the town as much as he could. It was all very well Belle making disparaging comments about it; it was her home. She could slag it off as much as she liked. It was like him and Scotland. He complained about the weather and the food and was very glad he’d left the country when he had, but woe betide anyone else who decided to insult his place of birth. He knew that Belle would likely feel a similar protectiveness towards Storybrooke. He had never really been enamoured of the place, but he knew that it meant a lot to Belle.

Driving home to Boston after their disastrous trip to see Moe, it had been extremely hard to bite back all of the things he wanted to say about the place. Any love for it that he might have come to hold for it had been completely shattered with the way Belle had been treated there. He knew that she had intended to stay longer, to make sure that her father would be ok when he got out of the hospital after his surgery, but she was so close to putting him back in the intensive care ward that ultimately, they’d made the executive decision to put Aiden’s money to good use and hire a nurse to take care of him throughout his recuperation, allowing Belle to go back to Boston and breathe freely at last.

Ever since that first night, curled up together in a motheaten single bed in the inn, Belle had been distant and withdrawn. At first he had put it down to being worried about her father, but Gold soon realised that it ran far deeper than that, and God, he hated her hometown for what it had done to her, for the way it had broken her spirit so completely within just a few days of being there and facing the scrutiny. He’d tried to get her to forget the awful words that had been spoken, to tell her that they didn’t matter and that the opinions of the petty-minded locals were of no importance, but deep down, he knew that it would have little effect on her, because to Belle, they were of importance. They did matter. These were the people that she had spent her formative years with, people in positions of power and influence that she respected, her own father for heaven’s sake.

Naturally, she was going to take what they said to heart.

Gold hated them, but not nearly as much as he hated himself in that moment. His mind was in a constant state of struggle between feeling that he should have done more to protect her whilst they’d been back in Storybrooke and knowing that Belle did not want to be protected; the idea of husband as knight in shining armour and wife as poor lost soul in need of guidance and protection was one that she had been trying to shake off for as long as he had known her.

And of course, there was the little monster at the back of his mind that was feeling a little peeved that he and Belle had not made love since they went to Storybrooke. Their intimacy stretched to chaste kisses and him spooning up behind her in bed. They’d been closer and more demonstrative than that even before they had been married.

It was not so much the lack of sex that bothered him. As he’d reassured Belle on their wedding night, he’d been so long without it that he wasn’t missing it. He was used to long dry spells. It was more the fact that they had made such progress and now, with one visit to Storybrooke and a bunch of ignorant nuns, it had all been completely undone, and Belle was denying herself all of the things that she had learned. It felt like she was punishing herself for something entirely out of her control, and in doing so, she was punishing him as well.

Then this in its turn, the annoyance at their suddenly deceased sex life, made him feel angry at himself for even thinking that way in the first place. Belle was going through hell, that much was clear, and here he was, thinking with his cock instead of his brain. Belle needed his help, but he didn’t know how to help her without it seeming like he just wanted sex. How could he ask her about what was going on in his head without coming across as a thirsty bastard with his own interests at heart? Belle was hurting and it killed him to see her that way, but at the same time, he knew he couldn’t raise the subject with her. All he could do was watch her flounder.

He slammed his fist against the workbench, the smarting pain a momentary distraction from his tumultuous thoughts, and Jefferson jumped three feet into the air with the sound. Gold felt a little guilty; he’d been so caught up in his own thoughts that he’d forgotten that Jefferson was in the shop with him, cleaning up the vintage frocks and headwear that they’d received in an estate sale the previous week.

“Did the bench do something to offend you?”

“No, no. The bench is an innocent victim in this drama.”

Jefferson laid down his sponge and took off his gloves, coming over to the workbench and patting Gold’s shoulder.

“No offence, Aiden, but you’ve been out of sorts ever since you came back from Storybrooke. I thought that Belle’s dad was going to be ok?”

“He is, more’s the pity.” The snarl was out of his mouth before he had chance to stop it, but at least Belle wasn’t around to hear it. He shot Jefferson a worried glance, but his friend didn’t seem to be too worried by the outburst. He seemed amused more than anything.

“There’s definitely something going on that you’re not telling me.”

There was a lot going on that he wasn’t telling Jefferson; he wasn’t accustomed to talking about his sex life with anyone, even if he knew all the lurid details of Jefferson’s whether he wanted to or not.

“This goes deeper than a normal hatred for one’s father-in-law.”

Gold sighed. “It’s private, Jefferson. And that’s not negotiable.”

“All right. I’ll leave well alone. You know I’m always here if you need a friendly ear or two. Is Belle ok?”

“Yes.” The answer came out too quickly out of a desire not to discuss it, and Jefferson’s eyebrows ended up in his hairline.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Belle’s fine, I’m fine, Belle’s dad’s going to be fine, now can we please drop the subject!”

“Ok, well, like I said, I’m here if you need me.” He made to put his gloves back on, then stopped. “Aiden, we’ve been friends for a long time; you know that you can trust me not to take anything you tell me any further, and you know that you can tell me anything. I know you’re not one to wear your heart on your sleeve and you much prefer to bottle up all your feelings until you explode under the weight of them, but I’ve told you time and again that’s not healthy. Whatever you’re going through, you don’t have to bear it alone.”

He did, though, that was the trouble. Gold sighed. How could he even begin to explain his woes to Jefferson? He’d never really held with the idea of a problem shared being a problem halved. It wasn’t fair to burden all his problems onto Jefferson; and it wasn’t as if Jefferson could offer a solution so it would be a pointless endeavour. Unless, of course, Jefferson could help…

He shook his head. No, that was utterly absurd. This was between him and Belle, and he would have to find a way to get through it on his own. It wasn’t fair on Belle to drag someone else into their intimate life. It would be as if he was complaining about her, which he categorically did not want to do.

He loved Belle, and he didn’t think that anything could happen between them that would make him stop loving her. Even if they never had sex again for the rest of their lives, he would be grateful for the amazing few weeks of intimacy that they’d had, and he would never stop loving her because of this enforced celibacy.

Even as he told himself this over and over again, he couldn’t help some doubt beginning to creep in. He would never hold her upbringing against her; he knew that she couldn’t help the mental trap that she was now in. But did Belle know that herself? Did she realise that, or was she thinking that he was angry with her for withholding sex? How could he let her know that it wasn’t a problem without addressing the elephant in the room?

What if she was regretting marrying him in the first place? If she’d stayed local and married someone from her own town, who’d had the same upbringing as she had, someone her own age; then she wouldn’t be having this problem. Gold tried to tell himself that she would have been miserable, because she never would have experienced (well, very likely wouldn’t have experienced) all the things that he had taught her and helped her to discover about herself, but then again, she couldn’t miss what she’d never known. Maybe it would have been better for her to live in ignorance.

He shook his head. He couldn’t wish that upon her; he had spent enough time in Storybrooke to know that the life there wasn’t one that he would wish upon his worst enemy, let alone the woman he loved.

Gold sighed again, and Jefferson just raised an eyebrow, clearly hoping for an explanation as to why his friend was so out of sorts, but Gold wasn’t going to go down that route. He stood up quickly, leaving his tools out on the bench and carefully stepping over Jefferson’s work on the floor.

“I need some air.”

“Right. Yes, that’s exactly what you need,” Jefferson muttered, sarcasm dripping from every word. “I think what you actually need is to stop pretending that you don’t have feelings but hey, I’m only your best friend and business partner, so what do I know?”

Gold just ignored him and stalked out of the shop, walking quickly down the street in no particular direction, just trying to get rid of all his nervous energy.

There was nothing that he could do to help Belle, or to help himself. All he could do was stay quiet and hope that she would find some kind of peace in her own time. If he gave her the space she needed to feel safe and come to terms with everything, then hopefully she would not misread his intentions.

Perhaps it would be best if he started sleeping in the spare room.

X

Belle was in a quandary. She was in more than a quandary. She was in a state of downright mental turmoil and it was now so bad that she had got to the stage where she couldn’t sleep.

She shifted onto her back, staring at the ceiling in the dark and wishing that she knew what to do. God, she wished that she had never gone back to Storybrooke. She knew that she couldn’t really blame her father for having a heart attack, but if he’d never had it, then she never would have had to go back to her hometown, and she and Aiden would still be living the blissfully happy marriage that they’d had before that fated trip. She would still be living in wonderful ignorance of the way the world saw her, and they’d be making love on every surface of the house.

Well, perhaps not every surface. Even before Storybrooke, Belle had still been somewhat sceptical about doing it in places other than the bed.

She sat up, drawing her knees up to her chest and resting her chin on them. Life would be so much easier if she was ready to have a baby. Then no one would judge her for having sex. She’d get pregnant, and she’d be a mother, and no one could accuse her of being a whore then. The only trouble was that she wasn’t ready. The thought of being a mother scared her, and she couldn’t in all honesty bring a child into the world if she wasn’t going to be in a fit state to take care of it. That wasn’t fair on her or the child.

So, naturally, her only choice had been just to stop having sex, the two voices in her head at constant war with each other. One of them was screaming that it really didn’t matter what the nuns thought of her, that she didn’t even live in Storybrooke anymore so why should she care what the town’s opinion of her was? Why shouldn’t she enjoy sex like she’d been doing for the past few weeks? The other was yelling equally loudly that she should never have been enjoying it in the first place and what she was doing was a sin, that the union of man and wife was for the purposes of procreation, that’s why sex was so sacred and had to wait till marriage, after all. If you’re not doing it to make a baby then you shouldn’t be doing it at all!

And then there was a third voice, a calm, rational, placid voice that kept poking her with a sharp fingernail and telling her that she wasn’t the only person in this marriage, and she wasn’t the only person that she was denying when she had entered this period of sudden celibacy. Aiden was suffering as well. She knew that he was missing their previous intimacy. On the days when she woke up before him, she could feel his erection pressing into her backside where he was spooned up close against her, and on the days when he was up first, she could feel the chill emanating from the shower. He had never pressed her, never once mentioned the fact that their wonderful progress had ground to a screeching halt overnight. He had never expressed any dissatisfaction or frustration, but she knew that he must be feeling it, and in a way, she’d feel better if he was angry with her, because then she could be angry with him back instead of being angry with herself.

It was the ultimate paradox. She shouldn’t want to have sex, but at the same time, she was supposed to satisfy her husband, wasn’t she? She was hardly being a good wife if she was leaving him wanting all the time like this. There was no wonder that he’d stopped sleeping in the same bed as her.

Maybe, as long as she didn’t enjoy it, it was all right. She’d be performing her duty as a wife, performing a necessary sacrifice to make sure her husband was well satisfied; surely she couldn’t be considered a whore if she was doing that, surely that couldn’t be living in sin. The only trouble was, of course, that Aiden loved her, would never do anything to hurt her, and would certainly never make love to her without ensuring that she was enjoying herself just as much as he was. He’d rather not have sex at all than have it and think that Belle was just performing a necessary chore.

And she didn’t want it to be a chore. She had so many happy memories of learning with Aiden, of discovering all the ways that he could make her body sing, and her his. She didn’t want that to be marred with any experiences that were anything less than pleasant.

Maybe women just couldn’t win. It all went back to Eve. She was still being punished for the original sin. She was a whore if she had sex, and she was a bad wife if she didn’t. There was no way out. She should have just become a nun and have done with it.

Belle grabbed her pillow and threw it across the room with a scream of frustration, grabbing Aiden’s from his empty side of the bed and burying her face in it, bursting into a flood of hot, angry tears.

She missed her husband. She missed having sex with him. She missed feeling all the wonderful things that he could make her feel. She wanted him so badly, and she hated herself for wanting him. She hated herself for having let the nuns get under her skin, but now that they were there, she couldn’t get them out again. It was like they’d taken over, making her feel guilty about things that she had just about managed to stop feeling guilty about.

She felt worthless, like an entire part of her identity had been ripped away and replaced with that one hateful, horrible word. Whore.

She screamed into the pillow, beating it with her fists. To the outsider, she would have looked mad. She felt mad; she was so full of self-loathing and conflicting thoughts that she could well have been going insane for all the sense her own mind was making to her at the moment.

Deep down, she knew that it was not her fault, that it was the worldview she had been brought up into that was deeply flawed and contradictory in itself. She’d always known this, and the fact that she could no longer view these things rationally made her hate herself all the more.

“Belle?”

Aiden crept into the room, picking up her thrown pillow as he came across, sitting down on the bed beside her and taking her in his arms. Belle let herself be held, leaning into his side as the pillow absorbed her snotty sobs.

She wondered how long this breakdown had been in coming. Would she have been all right if she had never gone back to Storybrooke, or had that just hastened it? Had she just been ignoring all the warning signs before, going too fast because it felt too good?

“Oh Belle, my love.” Aiden held her tighter, kissing the top of her head. “You’ll be ok, I promise.”

That was the problem, though. Belle didn’t think that she was going to be ok. She had reached a cliff, tumbled over, and was now in freefall. She didn’t know how she was going to claw her way back from this. All she knew was that Aiden’s arms were around her and she didn’t ever want him to let go. Since before their marriage, she had always felt safe in his arms, and she needed the comfort he brought her now.

Finally, there were no more tears to come, and she wiped her face, resting her aching head against Aiden’s chest.

“What do you need, my love?” he whispered. “What can I do to make it better?”

Belle shook her head.

“I don’t think that there’s anything you or I can do,” she mumbled.

“Oh.”

He sounded so crestfallen, so defeated. He wanted to help her so badly, and she had no idea how he could.

She had no idea how she could help herself.


	10. Chapter 10

Belle had hoped that a night out with the girls would take her mind off everything. If she was thinking about having fun and getting tipsy off overpriced cocktails, then she wouldn’t be thinking about Aiden. Or about sex. She wouldn’t be thinking about any of the things she shouldn’t be thinking about, even though she knew that logically, there was absolutely no reason why she shouldn’t be thinking about them.

Unfortunately, her ploy wasn’t working.

They were in _Aesop’s_ , a favourite haunt for the three of them that they had quickly found just after Belle had moved to Boston and fallen in with their group at college, and many happy times had been shared there. It was not a place that she had ever come to with Aiden, preferring to keep it as a girls’ only thing. There were plenty of other wonderful places that she had discovered with him, after all.

She twirled the straw around the ice in the bottom of her empty mojito glass, wondering if it would be too soon to go and get another. She was already on her second, and Ruby and Mulan were still on their first drinks.

“What’s up?” Mulan touched her arm gently, her face full of concern. “You haven’t smiled at all since we got here. Are you still worried about your dad?”

Belle shook her head. “No, I know that he’s fine.” Although she had not actually spoken to him since she left Storybrooke, she’d had regular updates from the nurse who had informed her that he was recovering well but was rather put out at having been told that he would have to give up alcohol for the foreseeable future if not forever.

“So, what’s the problem, then? This is supposed to be a happy girls’ night out, and no offence, but you’re looking like a wet weekend. Come on, let’s see if we can’t get a smile on that face.”

Belle managed a weak smile, but she knew that it would not be enough to appease Mulan, who was quite possibly the shrewdest person she’d ever met. Sure enough, Mulan just raised an eyebrow.

“Please, Belle, you know that you can talk to us about anything. Is it Aiden?”

“No. Yes. No. I don’t know. I don’t think that the problem’s with Aiden, he’s being a perfect gentleman about the whole thing. Maybe too much of a gentleman if I’m honest. I think that the problem’s with me, can I get another one of these things? I think I’m going to need it.”

Mulan went over to where Ruby was flirting outrageously and not at all seriously with the bartender, ordering another round of drinks in and collecting her girlfriend for a full-on crisis conference in one corner of the bar.

“So, it’s definitely a relationship problem, then?”

Belle nodded. “It’s not so much a relationship problem as a lack of relationship problem.”

“You’re not having sex.”

Belle spluttered on her cocktail. “What? Yes! No! Yes! How?”

“Look, when a relationship runs into problems, intimacy is always the first thing to go.” Mulan shrugged. “It’s just one of those facts.”

“Our relationship hasn’t run into problems.” Belle sighed. “Intimacy _is_ the problem. I just… I should never have gone back to Storybrooke. All of the hard work that I put in with Aiden to overcome everything that I learned there has all been undone, and it’s all my fault.”

“Belle, I don’t think that anyone can say that the weirdness you had to put up with whilst you grew up is your fault.” Ruby wrapped her arms around her, stroking her hair. “You did so well to break out of it, you can’t give that up now.”

“I know!” Belle exclaimed. “I don’t want to feel like this, I don’t even know why I’m feeling like this, I just am, and I can’t make it go away. I don’t want to want him, but I do.”

“Belle, wanting to have sex with a man you’re married to is hardly a crime.”

Belle huffed. “Tell that to the nuns.”

“They’re nuns, Belle, what the hell do they know about sex, and what right do they have to be passing moral judgements on anyone else?”

“I don’t know. They’re nuns. They can’t lie or they’ll get smited. Smote? Smooted?” Good grief, she probably should have eaten a bit more before she’d come out if this was how tongue-tied she got after two and a half mojitos. “Smeeted? Whatever. They can’t lie or God will get angry at them.”

“Look, just because they believe something’s true doesn’t necessarily follow that it is. You’ve got to trust your gut in these situations.”

“That’s great, but I don’t know what my gut is telling me at the moment; I’m getting mixed signals from it and I really don’t think that’s down to the amount of rum I’ve just drunk.”

“So, the nuns say you shouldn’t be having sex, even though you’re married, and you agree with them?”

“Yes. No. I don’t want to agree with them, who wants to agree with a nun? I just don’t want to be a whore either.”

Mulan and Ruby looked at each other and then at Belle.

“I think you’ve had one too many of those,” Mulan said, pulling Belle’s glass away from her a little. “Belle, you’re not a whore, why would you be? You’re a married woman.”

“I know that! But I don’t know who I am anymore! It’s like I’ve lost my entire identity! I was always the good little virgin girl and now I’m not. Now I’m not anything. I just am. People look at me and think ‘what is she?’ I’m not worth anything anymore now that I’ve lost my virginity. I have no value to society anymore until I become a mother and I’m not ready for that and if that means I can’t have sex until I am and if that means Aiden leaves me then I’m going to have to accept that.”

Belle looked in horror at the mojito glass. She hadn’t expected to pour out all her thoughts quite so volubly. When she looked up Ruby and Mulan were looking at her with what she assumed were shocked expressions similar to her own.

Ruby shook her head. “Belle, that’s… I don’t think that there are even words to describe that.”

“What happened in Storybrooke?” Mulan coaxed softly. “You were fine before you went back there to see your dad. What happened to change that? You were enjoying married life; you were enjoying having sex with Aiden. At least, I assume you were. You seemed fine about it when you were telling us about the honeymoon; I know it’s not a topic that you discuss often unless you’ve had a lot of rum.”

“It was nothing,” Belle mumbled. “It was so stupid, and I shouldn’t have let it get under my skin, but now it’s there and it won’t come out. Like the rhino in the just-so stories.”

“Belle, it’s got to be something if it’s made you so miserable that you think your marriage is ending.”

Belle sighed, grabbing her glass back from Mulan and taking a long gulp of it before telling them the whole story – her dad treating her as another man’s wife instead of his daughter because she’d had sex now, and of course, Mother Superior’s cutting words. By the time she’d finished, Mulan was ready to take the next greyhound bus to Maine and personally dismember everyone in Storybrooke apart from Rory.

“Oh Belle…” Ruby gave her another hug. “No wonder you don’t know who you are anymore. But we know who you are. Aiden knows who you are. You’re our friend, and you’re the love of his life. Surely he can reassure you that you have an identity beyond your virginity if no one else can.”

Belle sighed, and Ruby gave her a look. “You have talked to Aiden about this, right?”

“How can I?” Belle shrugged. “What can I say? How do I even start that conversation? And it’s not like he’s talking about it either, he just started sleeping in the spare room. He’s furious with me, I can tell.”

“Aiden’s a lovely guy, Belle. I know he’s absolutely terrifying on the outside to a stranger and I was ready to beat him with a stick when I first met him, but now that I’ve got to know him, I know how desperately devoted to you he is. He’s not the kind of guy to get angry with you for not wanting sex.”

“Then why isn’t he talking about it!”

“Maybe for the same reason you’re not talking about it? Maybe he’s waiting for you to bring it up, and he’s just giving you space until you feel ready for that?”

Belle could feel hot, angry tears pricking at her eyes, and she wiped them away before they could fall.

“I don’t know how to talk about it,” she said. “I need him to start that conversation because I’ve never had to start it before.”

“It’s very easy, honestly. All you have to do is begin with ‘hey, can we talk about the fact we haven’t had sex for weeks and you’re not even sleeping in the same bed as me anymore?’”

“Yeah, but…”

“Belle.” Ruby took her shoulders in a firm grip, forcing her to look up at her. “Belle, you need help. You can’t muddle through this on your own. Mulan and I can help you as much as we can, but you need to talk to Aiden about this, he’s the other person in your relationship. You still have Archie’s number, right?”

“I don’t need a psychiatrist, I’m not crazy.” Although, the more she thought about it, the more Belle wondered if she might actually be going mad. Listening to some of the things that she’d been saying over the course of the evening, they certainly wouldn’t have made sense to an outsider, even if inside her own brain, they conformed to a twisted and horrible sort of logic.

“No.” Ruby sighed. “No, you’re not crazy. No one’s saying that you are. But you need help. You need someone to talk to who can offer you proper, practical advice on how to overcome this. Because you can’t stay like this, Belle. You can’t live the entire rest of your life with the thoughts that you’re thinking now. You’re not worthless, you have value, the rest of the world doesn’t give a damn whether you’re having sex or not, and to be honest, anyone who sets that much store by your sex life or lack of it, anyone who is that damn interested in policing what you get up to between the sheets, is a pervert.”

The bald statement shocked Belle out of her increasing hysteria.

“I mean it,” Ruby said, and her expression was so ferocious that Belle couldn’t doubt her veracity. “Why is your sex life so important to that nun? Why is she so interested in it? Why does the state of every woman’s virginity have to be public knowledge in that town?”

In all her years, Belle had never questioned why. She’d despaired of it, she’d hated it, she’d pointed out the inconsistencies and paradoxes, but she’d never questioned _why_ the town found it so incredibly important to, as Ruby put it, police her sexuality.

She stumbled away from the table, the rum and lime juice roiling in her stomach. 

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

X

Belle was back earlier than he expected. Normally Gold was well asleep by the time she came in from one of her nights out at Aesop’s with Ruby and Mulan. He never begrudged her it; it was good that she had such great friends and that they’d stayed so close even after college had finished.

Tonight, though, it was barely gone eleven o’clock and he was still sitting up in the living room, a documentary about tropical fish keeping him company as he looked over the notes he’d made for the clock restoration. It was a particularly tricky piece and he knew that he wasn’t going to be able to leave it alone until he’d worked out all the kinks. He was surprised to hear the taxi pull up outside, and even more surprised to hear the doorbell. Belle was normally a giggly drunk, not a forgetful one.

Nevertheless, he got up and opened the door. Ruby was there with her arm around Belle, who was looking pale and drawn and not at all tipsy. It was enough to alarm him.

“Is everything ok?”

Ruby nodded. “Yeah, too many mojitos too quickly but she’s ok now. Not in the right frame of mind to continue the evening, though.”

Belle stepped into the house. “I need to brush my teeth, but I’ll be back down in a minute. Thanks for looking after me, Ruby.”

“It’s nothing, babe, you know that.”

Belle went upstairs, but Ruby didn’t move away from the door.

“Can I talk to you?” she asked. “It won’t take a sec. Belle’s… Look, you need to talk to her, ok? You need to ask her about what’s going on in her head because she won’t tell you without prompting, and you need to know what’s going on. So please, to save you both anymore heartache, please ask her what’s going on.”

Gold nodded dumbly as Ruby made her way back down the drive to the taxi, and he stood there in the doorway for a long time after it had driven off.

“Aiden?”

Belle’s touch on his shoulder brought him back to reality and he closed the door, following her into the living room.

“Can I get you anything?” he asked. “Ginger tea to settle your stomach?”

“No, I’ll be ok now.”

She sat down on the sofa, moving the clockwork sketches before running her hands through her hair with a groan. Gold thought about Ruby’s words. It was probably better to bring up the subject sooner rather than later, especially if it was still fresh in Belle’s mind having obviously been talking – or perhaps not talking, that was the point – about it with Ruby and Mulan. And of course, if he didn’t bite the bullet and do it now then he’d keep finding excuses to put it off. Like the fact that she was probably a bit drunk and wasn’t feeling well and the middle of the night wasn’t the best time to have this kind of conversation…

He bit off that train of thought and sat down beside Belle. It was now or never.

“Belle… What’s going on? I mean, you know… With us.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth he was convinced that he had said the wrong thing, because Belle immediately began to cry. He was about to apologise and try to take it all back when she reached out for him blindly, wrapping her arms around him in a vice-like grip and burying her face in his shoulder. At least the fact that she was seeking him out for comfort felt like a good sign, and he put his arms around her, pulling her in against his chest and trying to soothe her as best he could, without really knowing what had caused her to break down in the first place.

At last she quietened, and after a long period of tense silence, she spoke.

“I want you,” Belle whispered, leaning into Gold’s chest as he held her close. “I miss us being together. I miss us making love, I miss your hands and your lips. I want you so badly I can hardly bear it, but at the same time, every time I think about it and I think about how much I want it, something in my head screams at me that I shouldn’t want it, that it’s a sin to want it, that sex isn’t for me to enjoy, it’s just something that I have to do in order to satisfy you and make a baby. It feels so good and that makes me feel so bad, because it shouldn’t feel so good.”

“Oh Belle…” As much as it was a relief to know that Belle still desired him, even if she didn’t want to act on those desires, Gold had no idea how to get her out of the terrible spiral of shame that she had found herself in. “Belle, you can’t beat yourself up for enjoying sex, that’s…”

He didn’t want to say that it was ridiculous; because it wasn’t. This was the was the way that Belle felt about the whole affair and her feelings were valid, even if he couldn’t hope to get his head around them having never experienced the same kind of feelings that she was wrestling with now.

“I don’t want to!” Belle exclaimed. “Do you think I enjoy feeling like this? It makes me bloody miserable, Aiden! I don’t want to feel like this anymore! Sometimes I wish I’d never done it in the first place, then at least I wouldn’t be feeling like this!”

Her words felt like a slap in the face, and Gold pulled back as the horrific realisation dawned.

It was all his fault, and there was nothing that he could do to make it better because what he had done could not be undone. If he’d just left Belle alone then she’d be fine. He could have lived with a celibate marriage if it meant that Belle was happy. He should never have pushed her, God, he should never even have touched her if he had known just how horrible it was going to make her feel. She hadn’t been ready, and as the more experienced one in their relationship, he should have seen that and respected it.

Fuck, he was a monster.

“I’m sorry.” It was hardly enough to make up for all the pain that he’d caused her, but it was a start. He got up off the sofa, backing off from her. “Belle, I’m so sorry.”

Belle blinked. “Why are you sorry?”

“I pushed you into something that you weren’t ready for. I put my desires above your needs, and that’s something that I can never take back. I’m sorry, I should have waited for you.”

“You did wait for me. You waited for me for three years, I think you’re entitled to expect some output after that.”

“No! I’m not entitled to anything! You don’t owe me anything, Belle. It’s not your duty to be sexually available at my whim.”

“Yeah, well, tell that to the nuns who expect me to open my legs and satisfy my husband whenever he wants and then call me a whore for doing so! I can’t win, Aiden. No matter what I do, I can’t win. They’ll always think the worst of me unless I’m like them. I just can’t win against them. It’s like they want me to be miserable, so they rig the game and make sure that every hand I play, I’m going to lose. I have to have sex, and yet I can’t enjoy it, what kind of fucked up way of thinking is that!”

Belle suddenly went silent, staring down at the floor, and she buried her face in her hands.

“They screwed me up. They got in my head before I got married, and then you managed to get them out again, and I was almost back to normal, and then they got back in. Oh God, Aiden, I need help.”

She burst into tears again then, loud, wracking sobs filled with pain and misery, and Gold couldn’t have stayed away if he’d tried. He had to comfort her, just as he comforted her when she cried in the middle of the night. He had to let her know that it wasn’t her fault, and that he would help her get better even if he couldn’t undo the things he’d done to make her feel this way in the first place.

“I need help,” Belle gasped through her tears. “Christ, I think we both do. I need to get these bloody nuns out of my head. I don’t understand how what they say can make no sense at all and can still make me so fucking upset. I just want to feel normal again. I want to enjoy having sex with you again. Because I did enjoy it, and I don’t regret it. I could never regret that. Making love with you was wonderful. Learning to love you like that… It was the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I don’t blame you for me feeling like this. Before we went back there… I’d never been happier than I was when I was with you and I was feeling so much joy that I’d never experienced before.”

Gold took a deep breath, holding Belle close. Maybe it wasn’t his fault after all. Maybe the blame could all be laid squarely at Storybrooke’s door.

“I just wish I knew how to stop feeling like this. I need help.”

Belle fell into silence, and then, in a sudden burst of movement, she grabbed her purse from the floor and rummaged around in it, coming up with a scrap of paper.

_Archie Hopper_ , it read, along with a phone number.

Gold looked at the paper and then at Belle, raising his eyebrows.

“He’s Ruby’s ex,” Belle murmured. “He’s a therapist.”

She turned to Gold and gave him a weak smile. “I think that maybe Ruby and Mulan are right. I think that I need professional help.”


	11. Chapter 11

If Belle was being completely honest with herself, then she didn’t know why she hadn’t sought out therapy sooner. She supposed that it was because she was trying so very hard to pretend that she was fine, and that even though she’d had a somewhat strange upbringing, she’d still come out of it all right; it hadn’t affected her, she was perfectly well-adjusted. The trip back to Storybrooke and the fallout from that had proved beyond a doubt that she was not perfectly well-adjusted and that she was going to need help.

It had taken her a long time to admit that to herself and then to Aiden and then to Dr Hopper. In a way, having to seek out help made her feel weak. There must be thousands of other women in her position all over the world who were living in similar or worse circumstances to hers, and they didn’t have access to therapists. They just had to get on with their lives. It was Ruby who had made her see sense in the end, telling her in no uncertain terms that Belle refusing to seek out help and continuing to struggle wasn’t going to help anyone less fortunate than her in any way; that what Belle did about her own mental health did not have the blindest bit of difference on anyone else, and that if she wanted to make a difference to other people’s lives, then she first had to get her own life, thoughts and emotions in a healthy way first.

So, she had taken the plunge and sought out Dr Hopper, as recommended by Ruby. Certainly, she had never used him in a professional sense, but as soon as Belle had met him, she understood why Ruby had taken so much of a shine to him whilst they had been dating. He was kind, quiet, listening to her carefully without the slightest hint of judgement. Belle felt comfortable in his presence, and that in its turn gave her the confidence that he would be able to help her in the end.

The first session had been awkward; she’d been so unsure of what to say and how to phrase her worries, overly conscious of coming off as hysterical, constantly apologising for taking up so much of his time when he no doubt had other patients with far worse problems than being neurotic about sex.

But Dr Hopper hadn’t made her feel like she was wasting his time at all. He had been genuinely interested in what she had to say, and what he could do to help her, suggesting that for the first session, they left the crux of her problems aside, and she just told him a little bit about herself and Aiden. The words had flowed a lot more easily after that. Belle loved talking about Aiden; she just wasn’t quite as good at talking about sex with him. Or talking to him about sex. She was only just beginning to realise that communication was definitely her biggest problem. When they had first started having sex and Aiden had been encouraging her to set the pace and vocalise what she liked and disliked and what she was comfortable with, they had managed to make easy and comfortable progress. Things tended to break down when she wouldn’t talk to him, and things had started getting worse after the visit to Storybrooke when she had once more begun to think that bedroom activities weren’t something that should even be discussed.

Hopefully, talking to Dr Hopper about her feelings towards sex would help her talk to Aiden about the act itself.

During their second session, Dr Hopper had steered her gently towards talking more about her father and her childhood, and the strict purity ideals that she had been brought up with. He had asked her how she’d felt about those ideas at the time, and how she felt about them now.

“At the time, I didn’t really think all that much about them,” Belle had said. “I didn’t have any kind of reference frame, so I didn’t know any different. I just accepted it all as the status quo. It was only once I got out of town that I started realising just how messed up their views had been. And now…” She had sighed, picking at the threads on her jumper, and Dr Hopper had just waited patiently for her to go on. “Now, I hate them. I hate what they’ve done to me and I hate the way they make me feel. I feel like they’ve hurt me, sabotaged me from leading a happy life with the man I love. But at the same time, there’s still a sense of loyalty there because that’s my entire childhood; I don’t want to disparage it. I can’t help feeling that if I really hated that culture I’d been brought up in so much, I wouldn’t have any problem with completely going against everything that it stood for; which makes me think that maybe I don’t actually hate it and subconsciously I actually support it and believe it.”

It was a lot to unpack and Belle knew that she wasn’t going to have results instantaneously; but being able to talk about it with a professional was definitely helping. She knew that she could talk about it with Aiden, and with Ruby and Mulan, and that they would not judge her, but ultimately, they could not really offer her any advice. All they could do was offer sympathy, whereas Dr Hopper would be able to offer, hopefully, strategy.

By the end of their fourth session together, they had begun to cover the heart of Belle’s problems – the way she felt about sex, and intimacy in general, and why she felt that way. They had not yet reached any conclusions for how to stop her feeling that way, but she was sure that would come with time.

This time, Dr Hopper had given her homework to do. Whenever she found herself feeling guilty or shameful about sex, she was to write down how she was feeling and what had triggered that feeling. When they next met, they would review her notes, and try to work through why she was feeling this way, and what techniques she could use to try and break the cycle of shame.

She looked down at the notes she had taken earlier in the day.

_Feeling lousy. It’s a slow day at the library and I started having a nice little daydream about Aiden coming in and surprising me with kissing and fingering behind the issue desk, and then immediately had to cut the thought short when this little voice in my head gave a shocked gasp and started yelling about ‘scandal!’ ‘have some decorum!’ ‘have you no shame, you harlot!’_

_I mean, it was only a daydream, I wasn’t even doing anything, and I’d been enjoying myself up till that point._

_Am beginning to think that maybe exorcising all sexual thoughts from my head is the only way forward._

It wasn’t, of course, she knew that. Sometimes it just felt like the easiest way to cope.

She flicked back a page to the last entry, yesterday morning.

_I had another weird sex dream last night, very like the one I had in New York on the honeymoon. Well, it wasn’t quite as weird as that one. Aiden and I were in some kind of cabin in the middle of nowhere having sex in front of the fire, and I was sitting on his face. I was wet when I woke up, and I was desperate to touch myself, but I didn’t, because I felt too embarrassed about the whole thing._

“Are you ready, Belle?” Dr Hopper called her into the consulting room, and she stuffed the journal back into her handbag. Even though he was the one who had told her to start keeping it, there was still something in her that didn’t want him to see it. He’d already said that what she wrote down was private in the details and they would just be talking about the feelings that went with the thoughts; he was not expecting her to show him her homework, so to speak, but all the same, she still felt embarrassed by it, like she’d been caught reading something she shouldn’t have been.

She paused in the doorway. What a wonderful way to illustrate the entire point of why she was coming to therapy in the first place.

They went over the usual preliminaries, talking about life in general and the weather, a nice easing into the more difficult topics.

“How have you been finding keeping the journal?” Dr Hopper asked presently.

“It was hard at first,” Belle admitted. “I felt like writing all these thoughts down made them worse somehow. It made them permanent; it was proof that I’d been thinking these things and I couldn’t pretend that I hadn’t been. And after the first couple of days, I looked back at all the notes I’d taken and I thought that I must be a sex maniac with the amount of times I’d thought about sex and then tried to stop myself thinking about it, but I think that perhaps it’s like thinking of pink elephants, you know? If you try not to think about something, then you just think about it even more. So, I think it helped me to realise that trying to prevent myself from thinking about sex isn’t going to work.”

“Do you think that there are any patterns in the things that you’re thinking about, or more specifically, in the things that you’re feeling when you’re thinking about them?”

Belle took out the notebook and flicked through the last few pages, feeling her face begin to flame as she looked over some of her darker desires. In doing so, she found her answer.

“A lot of the time it’s embarrassment,” she said. “Even if I’m on my own, but especially if there’s someone around at the time. Even if it’s Aiden and I’m thinking about being with him, I still feel embarrassed about it. And guilty, like I’ve been caught with my hand in the cookie jar. And then I feel angry about feeling guilty and embarrassed, because I know that there’s no reason for it.”

“I don’t think that’s strictly true,” Dr Hopper said. “There is a reason that you’re feeling guilty and embarrassed. You aren’t feeling these things out of nowhere. By identifying them like this, it’s the first step to identifying that reason and being able to move past it. You may not think that the reason is logical, but that doesn’t matter. It’s still valid, so there’s no need to be angry about it.”

“I am angry though. I’m not just angry at myself for feeling these things when there’s no reason to – well ok, no, we’ve just gone through that. I’m angry at everyone else for contributing to that reason.” She paused. “I think that the person I’m most angry at is my dad. It was the Mother Superior who said the most hurtful things and who made me question everything, but the more I look back at it, I think that she was really just the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

It felt good to be able to talk about it to someone who wasn’t Ruby or Mulan or Aiden. Dr Hopper had no vested interest and wouldn’t interrupt her or threaten to go and throttle her father. Her friends were rightly horrified by what she had been through, but their judgement of the situation was always going to be skewed in a way. 

Dr Hopper didn’t say anything. He didn’t even make any notes in his little book. She didn’t like it when he made notes, it made her feel like there was something wrong, and she was pleased that he’d been making fewer and fewer over their last couple of sessions. It was as if now that they’d got down to the real crux of her problem, letting her talk it out was the easiest way of getting through it.

His silence was an invitation to continue, but Belle didn’t speak for a while, trying to get her thoughts in order.

“I’d been so worried on the way back to Storybrooke. I’d been so worried about how the town would perceive me now that I was no longer the virgin that they’d all been proud of. It felt like such a huge part of my identity had been stripped away; I didn’t even know who I was anymore. And then when my dad started to treat me like a stranger, that just compounded and confirmed my fears. I didn’t have an identity without my virginity. I was no one; I was a stranger in the town that I’d spent eighteen years of my life in. My sense of self was so closely linked to my perceived purity. I hadn’t felt it so acutely when I was here in Boston because I was surrounded by people who knew me for me and who valued me for things that really mattered. Back in Storybrooke, virginity was the only thing that mattered, and I no longer had it. It wasn’t so much that I was no longer special as that I was no longer, well, anyone. I wasn’t just ordinary; I was a non-person.”

It had taken her a while to come to the conclusion, but now that she had, it made sense.

“And I couldn’t get back that identity. I couldn’t suddenly be a virgin again. I’d lost it forever; I’d lost my relationship with my father forever. A part of me felt terrible. I’d sacrificed my relationship with my father because I wanted to have sex. I felt so selfish that I’d put my relationship with my husband above my relationship with my father – after everything he’d done for me, provided for me for eighteen years, raised me by himself after my mother died…”

Dr Hopper offered her the box of tissues from the coffee table.

“I just want to make sure that I’ve got this straight in my head,” he said, once Belle had blown her nose. “You say your father no longer saw you as his daughter after you got married.”

“Yes.”

“Belle, something that I come across a lot with relationship counselling is the idea of relationships being conditional. I think that this can apply to any kind of relationship, not just romantic ones. I mean, there are some conditions that are reasonable. We expect to meet people halfway in a relationship; we expect both people to do an equal amount of work to maintain that relationship. But no relationship that places conditions on your very identity is a healthy one.”

“Wait, are you saying that my entire relationship with my father was based on my being a virgin?” Belle could feel the panic rising in her voice. She didn’t know why, because all Dr Hopper was doing was rephrasing what she’d already said to him just a minute ago. She took a deep breath. He wasn’t saying anything that she didn’t already know, that she didn’t already regret.

He had said something very telling though.

_No relationship that places conditions on your very identity is a healthy one._

“You’re saying that my relationship with my father is unhealthy.” Well, she’d come to that conclusion already, it was just taking a long time to sink in. “Because he would only accept that relationship if I never lost my virginity. If I never stopped being his little girl. If I never… changed.”

“All people change, Belle. No one is the same person at thirty that they were at eighteen, or twenty-five. All relationships have to take into account the fact that no one ever stays the same person for their entire life. People change, and they grow, and they become more rounded as people. To expect someone to remain the same way forever is to stunt their growth as a human being, to clip their wings and take away the most fundamental part of their life – change.”

He smiled, and it was a warm smile, a smile that Belle could trust.

“You’re not the same person that you were before you got married. Your identity has changed; I don’t think that anyone can pretend that it hasn’t, because you’ve entered into a new and exciting phase of your life now. The point is: _that’s not a bad thing_. That’s not something to worry about; or feel ashamed of or embarrassed by. It’s not something to lose relationships over. You are different, and that’s the way it should be. That change and growth from new experiences is perfectly normal. It’s one of the most natural things that humans can do. It’s one of the things that makes us conscious beings in the first place.”

What Dr Hopper was saying made a lot of sense. Her relationship with her father had always centred around her being his little girl: she had always been his child, and he had continued to view her as a child even after she left home and began her adult life. Up until the moment when she got married and ‘became a woman’, having sex for the first time. Then he could no longer view her as a child; he could no longer reconcile her being an adult in her own right and being his child at the same time.

And that wasn’t Belle’s fault. Change was natural, growing up was natural, there was nothing she could have done to change that process. She could not remain an innocent child forever just because her father could see her no other way.

Her having sex had not ruined her relationship with her father. The relationship had already been unhealthy.

It was such a momentous revelation that Belle could not help but gasp at it. Things made so much more sense now. There was still so much more to unpack, so much more that she would need Dr Hopper’s help to get through, but this was a first step, a turning point. She couldn’t repair her relationship with her father until he accepted that she had changed, that she was no longer a child and that she could never have remained one. She had not done anything wrong.

“Change is inevitable,” Dr Hopper continued. “It can be scary, certainly, but it should never be suppressed. Your identity has changed and will continue to do so. This time next year, you won’t be the same person as you were when you got married. What are your feelings towards that?”

“Terrified,” Belle said, “but there’s not a lot that I can do about that. I think that maybe before we had this conversation that I would have been afraid of what Aiden would think of me, of me no longer being the same person that he married, but I guess, he’s going to change too, and I won’t feel any differently about him, so why should he feel any differently about me?”

“Exactly.” Dr Hopper smiled. “I think that you’re making excellent progress in the way that you see yourself, Belle, and I hope that we can keep working on this in our next session. But speaking of Aiden, how would you feel about inviting him to your next session?”

Belle was somewhat taken aback, and Dr Hopper went on.

“As we’re talking about the way you perceive yourself and your identity, it might be helpful for us to explore the identity that you have in Aiden’s eyes. Also, one of the things that you’ve mentioned to me is that you have trouble talking to him about the things that you’re talking to me about, so I was wondering if it might help you to begin that conversation here, in a neutral environment. Sometimes it can be hard to talk about these things in our own home because of all the associations that we have there; talking about difficult things can make a safe space no longer feel safe. I feel like Aiden might benefit from the session as well; it could help teach both of you the tactics you need to be able to communicate confidently with one another. You said that you didn’t seem to have this trouble when you were first married, so maybe this session could help you rediscover the easy communication that you had a few months ago.”

Belle nodded. Things had been so much easier back before her identity crisis, and she did desperately want to get back to the way it had been before. She missed it; not just the sex but the closeness, the intimacy, the idea that she knew what Aiden was thinking and how he was feeling without the need for words.

“Yes. I think that would be helpful.”

Their time was up, and Belle got up to leave. She felt exhausted, like she’d just run a double marathon, but it was a good kind of exhaustion. She felt like she was getting somewhere, and the thought gave her hope anew that she could come out of the other side of this a stronger person, with a stronger sense of her identity – one that was not, and never should have been, centred on her virginity.


	12. Chapter 12

Gold felt unaccountably nervous sitting in the waiting room with Belle. He’d agreed to come along with her to the therapy session that Dr Hopper had suggested, but he didn’t know what he was going to get out of it. The focus was to get Belle better; surely they shouldn’t be wasting time with him.

Belle squeezed his hand, sensing his unease. “It’s ok. Dr Hopper’s really nice, there’s nothing to be worried about.”

Gold didn’t reply. It was all very well Belle saying that Dr Hopper was really nice, because he was supposed to be really nice to her. She was the one that he was supposed to be helping. Since Gold was part of the problem in the first place, it was highly likely that Dr Hopper wouldn’t be quite as nice to him as he was to Belle. As stupid as it was, he was still expecting to go into the room and immediately be berated for causing all of Belle’s problems in the first place.

He knew that was ridiculous, because Belle’s problems stemmed from something that went far beyond her marriage to him, but at the same time, he couldn’t shake the image.

“Belle and Aiden?” Dr Hopper welcomed them through into his office, and he shook Gold’s hand. “It’s good to meet you, Aiden. Thank you for coming today.”

Gold just nodded, sitting down on the sofa beside Belle.

They began with just exchanging pleasantries; Dr Hopper asked Belle how she’d been feeling generally throughout the past week and Gold was included easily and seamlessly in the communication. All too soon though, it was time for the discussion to begin in earnest.

“Aiden, I don’t know how much Belle has told you about the things that we’ve been working on in her sessions, but the reason I asked you to come along today is all to do with communication,” Dr Hopper began. “Since communication involves two people, I thought it would be a good idea to have you both here, so that you can support each other in a safe environment and maybe we can begin to get to the bottom of some of these things that are causing, well, let’s call it a mis-step in communication. Belle, as I’ve talked about this with you before, maybe you’d like to speak first, if you have your thoughts in order.”

Belle nodded, and Gold realised that she was still holding his hand and squeezing tightly. He took that as a good sign.

“I don’t know how to start the conversation,” she said. “Not this conversation, obviously. But _the_ conversation, the conversation that we’re not having. I don’t know how to address the elephant in the room because firstly it’s not something that I’ve ever had to address before and secondly, I still have the mentality that it’s not something that should be addressed. The second part I can work on, and have been working on with Dr Hopper, but I feel like I still lack the… knowledge, for want of a better word, to tackle the first part.” She sighed. “I know that we need to talk about what happened in Storybrooke and about the fact that our sex life has suddenly screeched to a halt, but I don’t know how to start that conversation, so I don’t start it.”

Belle looked over at Aiden before leaning into his side. “I needed you to start the conversation, but you didn’t. I’m not blaming you; you didn’t know that you needed to start it because I was saying literally nothing, but I didn’t know how to tell you that I needed you to start it.”

Gold, still trying to get his head around everything that Belle had just said, gave a slow nod. Even though Belle had said that she didn’t blame him, he still felt like it was his fault.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, Aiden, you’re not a mind-reader. To you it must have been just very strange, going from a normal, healthy, communicative relationship to a sudden complete lack of intimacy with apparently no reason why and your wife just refusing to speak about it. From your point of view, I wouldn’t want to bring the subject up either.”

For the first time since agreeing to come to the session, Gold began to feel the slightest bit of relief and began to really believe that it wasn’t entirely his fault.

“Aiden, how would you feel about giving us your point of view?” Dr Hopper asked.

Gold took a deep breath.

“I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t want to bring it up,” he admitted. It felt good to finally get it off his chest. “I couldn’t bring it up. I knew how much you were hurting, but I couldn’t exactly say anything about it because I didn’t want you to think that I was just interested in sex. I didn’t know how to start the conversation either, but I suppose that I was coming from the opposite direction that you were. You were coming from a place of inexperience, whereas I was coming from a place of too much experience. I didn’t want you to feel like you owed me anything, because you’ve said that you feel that way before and I didn’t want to do anything that would make you feel that way again. When the only symptom that we had that something was wrong was the lack of intimacy, I couldn’t bring that up as a problem. When we first got married, I’d made a point of telling you that we could wait until you were comfortable, that we could take our time. It would make me a horrific hypocrite if I then brought up the subject of us suddenly not being intimate anymore, wouldn’t it?”

He sighed. “So that’s why I didn’t say anything either. I was waiting for you to bring up the subject, because I was working on the principle that if you brought it up, that meant you were ready to talk about it, and I would work at your pace. And you were waiting for me to bring it up because even though you were ready, there was some kind of communication barrier in place that made it impossible for you to start.”

Belle nodded. “Yeah, I think that pretty much sums it up.” She gave a sad little laugh. “I thought you were mad at me. We weren’t talking, and then you just moved out of our bedroom with no explanation.”

“Belle, I could never be mad at you for not wanting to have sex. I thought you were mad at me, that’s why I moved out of our bedroom.”

“Why would I be mad at you?”

Aiden thought back to the conversation that they’d had that even when everything had come out, when Belle had made the decision to start therapy in the first place. Even thought that had got their feelings out into the open and they had begun to work through things then, that single sentence still stood out as a stark warning to him. He had taken the words to heart and even though their subsequent talks had put his mind at rest, they could not put it at rest completely.

“I thought that you regretted it. All of it. You said yourself, that night, that you wished you’d never done it in the first place. No amount of apologising on my part could ever make up for that, Belle. Nothing could ever, ever make that ok. Having sex for the first time isn’t something that you can do over. I thought that you regretted it, and that was my fault. I was the experienced one, I was the one who should have put the brakes on things, I was the one who should have seen that you weren’t comfortable and that you were going to regret it, and I didn’t, and that is something I will always have to live with.”

“Aiden, I’m not a child.” There was the faintest hint of steel in Belle’s voice. “I’m thirty years old. Yes, you’re older than me and you’re more experienced than me, but we’re equal partners in this relationship; you don’t need to shield me from my own feelings and reactions. I was a virgin, I was inexperienced and unknowledgeable, maybe I was even a bit naïve, but I was an adult and capable of making my own decisions and taking responsibility for them. And Aiden, you _did_ see that I was uncomfortable. That first night, you _were_ the one to put the brakes on things and make sure that I didn’t regret it. All throughout our honeymoon, you were so caring, and so conscious of my needs and boundaries even as I was still discovering what they were alongside you. You always told me to say something if I was uncomfortable, to tell you to stop if you were going too fast. And I never said anything; because I was never uncomfortable. You never went too fast. I never regretted any of that.”

Unexpectedly, Belle slipped her arms around him, nudging her forehead against his. “I’m sorry that I made you feel that way. But Aiden, you should have said something.”

“What could I say, apart from sorry, which was never going to be enough?”

“God, we’re terrible at talking to each other when the chips are down, aren’t we?” Belle laughed again, but there was a little more humour in it now, more like a genuine laugh than one tinged with regret and sadness. “When everything’s all right, we’re very good at talking to each other, but the minute something happens, we both just close up.”

“Why do you think that is?”

Gold startled at the words, he had almost forgotten that Dr Hopper was in the room with them and he looked over at the therapist. There was no judgement or censure in his face, and there were very few notes on his notepad. He wondered if there was actually any therapy involved in this session, or if it was simply about getting him and Belle to actually talk to each other.

It felt strange in a way, having this discussion here in Dr Hopper’s office, but at the same time, there was definitely something in what he’d said about it being a safe place. Having someone outside the relationship giving them permission to talk about the things that they had not given themselves permission to talk about made it easier. Neither of them had been able to start this important conversation, so someone else had started it for them, and there was no shame in that.

“I don’t know.” Belle released Gold out of her embrace, but her hand returned to his. “I suppose that this is the first major crisis in our relationship that we’ve had to face together. We’ve had our disagreements and things in the past, of course, but ultimately, before we were married, we’d reached a nice little happy plateau and I thought that we were going to stay there. Then something out of the blue happened and cause a whole bunch of problems that we’d never had to deal with before, so we didn’t know how to deal with them. I think that it’s because this is the first time that Storybrooke and my upbringing there has really had a major impact on our lives, and it happened so comparatively soon after the wedding. If this had happened a year or so in the future, maybe we would have got through it differently because we’d have more experience of being a married, intimate couple under our belts.”

Gold nodded his agreement. “Even though we’ve been together a long time, we’ve only been sleeping together for a few months, and that changes the dynamic of a relationship. We’d never faced any problems with intimacy before because we’d never been intimate before, and whilst I’ve had previous relationships that I can draw on experience from, Belle hasn’t. This has been a huge unknown for the both of us, in that respect, and we just haven’t really been equipped to deal with it.”

“Well.” The doctor smiled. “I hope that by the end of our sessions together, you will be equipped to deal with it. Obviously I hope that no further situations like this one arise, but life is unpredictable, and I can’t pretend that crises aren’t going to happen in the future. But, with the right tools and mechanisms in place, you’ll be able to deal with them in a strong and healthy way.”

They continued to talk amongst the three of them for a while, looking through the various coping strategies and communication techniques that they could use in the future, and by the end of it, Gold was feeling much calmer than when he had first entered the doctor’s office. There had been no censure; there had been no apportioning of blame. In fact, blame hadn’t really come into it at all. They had looked at why things had happened, not who was responsible for making them happen. In the end, that wasn’t helpful. What was helpful was making sure that it didn’t happen again.

“Well, our time is almost up,” Dr Hopper said eventually. “I’m glad that you’ve been able to make such good progress today and I really hope that it has been beneficial to the both of you.”

Belle nodded. “Well, it has for me. Aiden?”

“Yes. Thank you, doctor.”

“You’re very welcome. I think all you really needed was someone to steer you both in the right direction. Aiden, would you mind if I spoke to you alone for a couple of minutes before we run out of time? Belle, is that all right by you?”

“Sure, I’ll wait outside. I’ll see you next week, Dr Hopper.”

Gold was about to make some kind of protest that these were Belle’s therapy sessions and he wasn’t the one who needed them, but the last hour of conversation had shown that maybe he did need some help after all, and then Belle had slipped out of the office and he was alone with the doctor. Right, this was it. This was when he was going to get told that it was all his fault after all and that the only thing to do was to leave Belle alone and…

“Aiden, I promise I’m not going to eat you, there’s no need to look so terrified.” Dr Hopper smiled. “I just wanted to go over a couple of things that I think are more relevant to you personally than to the both of you. I’ll go over Belle’s personal points with her next week.”

“Right.” Gold was not at all reassured.

“The main thing that I want to stress is that you are allowed to ask what is wrong, if it is obvious to you that something is wrong. That was the thing that I picked up on the most when you were speaking earlier; you felt that you couldn’t ask what was wrong in case Belle felt like it was coming from a place of accusation or a desire for intimacy above all else. But ultimately, as you knew yourself, the lack of intimacy in your relationship was indicative of something deeper. Asking what is hurting her and what you can do to help doesn’t show you as some kind of sex maniac who is only concerned about the intimacy in your relationship – it shows that you care about her and want to stop whatever’s troubling her first and foremost. And you have to trust that Belle knows that.”

“Yes.” He had to trust that Belle knew her own mind. It was as she’d said before. She wasn’t a child.

“I hope that the session has helped you, and if you do want to speak with me again about anything – not just related to your relationship with Belle – then I’d be happy to see you again.”

They shook hands again and Gold left the office in something of a daze. Belle was waiting for him outside and she hooked her arm through his as they made their way through the streets back towards the library. They were almost outside the doors when Belle stopped.

“Aiden…” she began. Gold turned to her. Her bottom lip was between her teeth again, a sure sign that she was thinking and that she was concerned.

“Yes?”

“About what I said. That night. _The_ night. When I decided to seek help in the first place. When I said that sometimes I wished I’d never done it in the first place because then I wouldn’t be feeling so miserable.”

Gold nodded, his heart beating painfully in his chest. “Yes?”

“When you brought it up in the session I don’t think I really addressed it properly because you needed to get your feelings out about it, and then that took me off in a different direction, about claiming responsibility for my own decisions – which I did need to get off my chest as well, in all fairness. Sorry if I sounded snappy. It’s just that having spent my whole life with people viewing me as a child because I hadn’t had sex, with that being the main sticking point of my relationship with Dad which I’ve literally only just started to realise and come to terms with in therapy, it just felt like you were starting to do exactly the same thing. I know you’re not because you’re coming at it from a different angle, but I just wanted to shut that down before it got out of hand. Anyway, I’ve got off topic again.”

Gold nodded. “No, it’s good to get that out in the open. I honestly hadn’t thought about it that way, but I can see exactly what you mean. I need to trust you to be able to make your own decisions when it comes to what you are and aren’t ready for.” It went back to what Dr Hopper had just reassured him. He had to trust Belle to know her own mind.

“Yeah. And when it matters, when I’m not ready for something, you do pick up on that. I have never, ever been worried about you pushing me too far too quickly. But back to that night.”

“Yes.”

“What I said… That was never intended to be a reflection on you. That never came out of a place of anger for you, never. I’m so sorry that you took it that way, but honestly, and I know this is going to sound harsh, I wasn’t even thinking about you and your role in the proceedings at the time. The one overriding thought I had was that if I had been a good girl and not wanted to have sex, then I wouldn’t be feeling so wretched because I was no longer a virgin and people no longer saw me as having any worth. I mean, I know that’s a load of bollocks, but go with it for now.”

Gold gave a soft laugh, recalling their first morning of marriage, back in the hotel just outside Storybrooke. “All right. Going with the analogy.”

Belle giggled. “It was a great analogy; it really helped me. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that my feelings at that time were purely selfish and came from a place of self-loathing; they weren’t directed at you at all. They were directed at me, at my supposed moral weakness for giving in to temptation and losing my virginity. And, shock horror, enjoying the process. I just want you to be absolutely sure of that. I don’t regret anything we’ve done together. And when we get back to doing it together, then that’s going to be the best night of my life.” She smiled.

Gold smiled too, because there was nothing but sure positivity in Belle’s face. She was definitely looking forward to it. “I think it might be mine, as well.”


	13. Chapter 13

It felt good having Aiden back in bed with her. Belle had missed him terribly during the week that he had slept in the spare room, even though he had migrated back to their shared bed a couple of times when she had been crying in the night at the stupidity and unfairness of her brain, and he had come to comfort her like he always would.

Now he’d been back in her arms where he belonged for two months, and she smiled, nuzzling in closer to his side. She had missed this platonic closeness even more than she had missed making love with him, and sometimes she never wanted to let him go. People had always said that she was a hugger, touchy-feely, and she was even more so with Aiden. He’d not been so tactile when they had first met, in fact, her exuberance when it came to hugs and kisses had put him off his guard and he’d been rather wary of her.

But, just as he had eased her into deeper intimacy, so she had eased him into more casual touches and embraces. Strange that she should have been the one to teach him first, when she always thought of him as the more experienced one. It just went to show that there was still a lot that they could learn from each other. Their sessions with Dr Hopper were proving that too.

Aiden’s hand slid down her back, coming to rest on her hip, the tip of his thumb slipping under the waistband of her pyjama pants. Their intimacy had returned in little baby steps over the course of the therapy sessions, much as they had worked in small steps when they had first been exploring each other on their honeymoon. This time though, there was much less nervousness and fumbling. They were much more familiar with each other’s bodies, their likes, and their dislikes; falling back into the rhythms that they had already begun to establish was easier than Belle had thought it was going to be.

She still overthought things sometimes, but now she had strategies in place for when her mind began to turn against her and the snide voice in her head would attempt to get her down. Now she could argue with it rationally.

There was nothing sinful in what she was doing. There was nothing shameful in wanting to be intimate with her husband. She deserved to be loved. She deserved to have this pleasure, and no one had the right to judge her for it.

It was a mental pep talk that she had been giving herself regularly since starting with Dr Hopper, and so far it seemed to be working for her. With every step that she and Aiden took back towards each other, it got a little easier to win against the snide voice, to tell it that it had no place in her sex life. Sex with Aiden was not a moral or immoral act; it was simply a pleasurable one, and she had every reason to enjoy it to the full.

She slipped her hand up under his t-shirt, stroking over his belly and feeling him twitch, his muscles tensing as he readied himself for an onslaught of tickling. Belle smiled to herself in the darkness. She wouldn’t do that to him. Not tonight, at least. Tonight, she wanted something more, and she was not going to let any intrusive thoughts get in the way.

She leaned over to kiss him, and he returned it wholeheartedly, his hand coming up to cup her face beneath the curtain of her hair. It was not a fierce or hungry kiss; it was still sweet and soft, but there was so much deep passion in it, so much need and longing and hope for reunion that Belle had to pull away to get her breath back before going back for another.

“I want you,” she whispered once she released him again. “I love you and I want you.”

“Are you sure?” Aiden didn’t sound like he was trying to put her off, not when his thumb was stroking over her cheek and running along her lips. His asking was more than just a formality, but it was clear that he wanted it just as much as she did. He just wanted to be sure that this want on her part was coming from a place of genuine desire, not a sense of misguided obligation.

Going to Dr Hopper had definitely been the right choice.

“Absolutely.” Belle kissed him again. “I’ve missed you, and I’ve very much enjoyed becoming reacquainted with your beautiful body over the last few days. I’m hoping to get even more reacquainted with it tonight.”

“Then that is what will happen, my darling Belle.” Aiden gently pushed her back against the pillows, and she slipped her arms around his neck, giving a little sigh of happiness as he began to kiss his way down her neck and across her collar, taking the strap of her camisole in his teeth and pulling it down to expose her breast. He was meticulous in his ministrations, leaving no inch of skin untouched as he worked his way down over her breast, sucking her nipple between his lips and swirling his tongue around the sensitive little bud until she felt it pebble and harden. She felt him smile against her skin, and then he was moving across to the other side, repeating the treatment. Belle bucked her hips up against him, arching her back to push her breasts up, closer into his wonderful touch.

She could already feel the wet heat beginning to gather at her entrance, and for the first time in too long a time, she felt no shame in it. This was the way that she was supposed to be feeling. This was not wrong. This was so very, very right.

Aiden paused in his delicate kisses, sitting up a little to help her out of her camisole and to pull off his own t-shirt, but she did not have time to miss his touch, as he continued down over her stomach, darting his tongue into her navel and making her whole body writhe with pleasure at the sensation. It felt like it was going straight down to her clit, and he smirked up at her before doing it again. Belle couldn’t help the little shriek that escaped her, and she immediately clamped a hand over her mouth in embarrassment.

“No, no, be loud, my darling,” Aiden crooned, reaching up to move her hand away. “Be as loud as you like. I like knowing what makes you feel good.”

He reached the waistband of her pyjama pants and began to push them down, pressing kisses to the inside of her thighs and her mound. Belle kicked the pants off, unable to stop her hips from pushing up again, needing his touch right in her centre.

Aiden was happy to oblige, and he lapped along her folds, fingers coaxing out her swollen pearl as his tongue pushed gently at her entrance. Belle could only moan, wriggling and rolling her hips at the wonderful sensation. His tongue really felt so criminally good down there, and she wondered where he had learned his technique. She sent up some silent thanks to whoever had taught him, because she knew that she would not be enjoying this anywhere near as much in other circumstances. This was purely for her pleasure; this was never going to get her pregnant. It should have been bad, but it felt so very, very good that there could be no moral judgement attached to it. They weren’t hurting anyone by doing this. 

In fact, it was very much the opposite.

Aiden shifted, his tongue now probing around her clit, drawing little circles, and a finger was pressing up inside her and stroking insistently at her inner walls. So much pleasure, so many touches in so many places… It didn’t surprise Belle at all when she came with a cry, the dam breaking and pleasure flooding through her veins.

“That’s it,” Aiden crooned, pressing little butterfly kisses to her quivering tummy as she came down from the high, pulling his finger out of her slowly and licking her juices off it. He looked so debauched like that, her arousal glistening on his chin and his hair at all angles. It made her heart turn a somersault and sent a fresh wave of heat down between her legs. “I like it when you make a bit of noise. Let it out. Let it go.”

“That was wonderful.” Belle groaned, spread-eagling her limbs on the bed as Aiden began to kiss his way back up her body with just as much eager tenderness as he had made the reverse journey. “Oh Aiden, I missed this so much. I missed your mouth, and your hands, and I just missed you.”

“I’m here now,” he said, reaching her mouth and capturing her lips again. “We’re going to be ok.”

Belle nodded, carding her fingers into his hair to pull him down for another kiss. She could taste herself on his lips, and whilst she wasn’t sure that she liked the taste, she could feel her heart beating faster at the inherent eroticism of it.

She could feel his cock, hot and hard against her thigh, and she brought a hand down between them, cupping him through his pyjama pants.

“Seems I’m not the only one who missed this,” she purred, and immediately felt the blush beginning to rise in her cheeks, because of everything that she had overcome, talking sexy was still something that kicked a natural response. She didn’t feel too embarrassed by it, though. She was still on a learning curve, after all, and they did say that the best way to learn was by constant practice.

Belle was looking forward to all the practice that she could get. Sure, there were still going to be moments when her mind got the better of her, but for now, those moments had been put to bed, and there was nothing stopping her from enjoying the here and now. If she woke up filled with regret, then she had the techniques that Dr Hopper had taught her for working through those feelings, and she had Aiden to talk everything over with.

“Oh Belle, you have no idea.” He helped her pull his pants down and off, and they joined her nightwear on the floor beside the bed. Belle’s hand closed over his as he lined them up, and then he was pushing into her, filling her up and stretching her in the best way possible, moving so slowly and carefully to let her get used to the feeling. Belle curled one of her legs around his, bringing him a little closer. She wanted him close, as close as possible, the sweat mingling on their skin as she held him tightly.

This was what they meant when they talked about two becoming one. Even when they’d been making love before the crisis, Belle didn’t think she’d ever felt as close to Aiden as she did now, having come through all they had together. She could feel the tears beginning to prick the back of her eyes, and she screwed them tight shut, not wanting to cry and ruin the moment. Aiden would worry, even though she knew that these tears were coming from a place of such utter joy and happiness.

Aiden shifted his weight on his forearms and began to move in her, long and slow thrusts of his hips, and Belle moved her own to meet him. His coarse pubic hair was tickling against her sensitive folds making her wriggle and arousing her anew, but it was just not quite enough to get her back to that glorious peak.

“Touch yourself,” Aiden whispered, his voice breathy and strained as his pace began to quicken, losing finesse along the way. “I can feel that you’re close, my lovely. Let’s see if we can’t get you there again.”

Belle let go of him, shakily reaching down between their bodies to press a finger against her clit. She did so without thinking, motivated only by the need for another orgasm that was building but not quite there. She’d always been somewhat wary of touching herself before, but Aiden had always been encouraging. He was being encouraging now. He wanted her to do it; he was asking her to do it.

So, she did, and as the second climax chased down the afterglow of the first, she definitely did not regret it. Nor did she regret the sob of Aiden’s name that escaped her.

“Oh, Belle, _Belle_!”

She felt the spurt of warmth inside her and his movement stilled, forehead resting against hers.

“Oh Belle,” he breathed. “I’ve missed this.”

“Me too.”

He slipped out of her as he began to shrink and soften, rolling off her and but pulling her in close to his side. His brow furrowed as he shifted his hold on her, and he reached out to touch her cheek. Belle realised that she was crying after all.

“Are you all right?”

She nodded. “I’m perfect. Honestly. I don’t even know why I’m crying; I’m so happy.”

Aiden kissed her. “As long as they’re happy tears.”

“God, Aiden, they are. They really are.”

In that moment, Belle didn’t think that she had ever been happier. It was not the first time they’d made love. It was not the first time she’d had an orgasm. It was not the first time they’d been intimate since the Storybrooke debacle; they’d been building up to this for a while. But somehow, it felt like this time meant something very important to the both of them, like they needed to take this step to properly reconnect and get back on the same page of her intimate education.

There was still a way to go, a lot to learn, a lot to unpack with Dr Hopper, but this moment, right now, gave Belle so much hope that it was almost overwhelming.

She loved Aiden, and he loved her, and there was nothing wrong with them expressing that love physically. Whatever happened, they would make it work.

Belle drifted off to sleep with a smile on her face.

X

“Oh.”

Gold looked up on hearing Belle’s exclamation. She had been going through the mail whilst he’d been making breakfast, and he hadn’t been paying all that much attention to her, his mind still firmly reliving the previous night. He felt like it was a turning point in their relationship somehow. He didn’t know why, it wasn’t exactly the first time they’d made love, but there had been something different about it. Something more intense.

He was glad of Dr Hopper’s advice. Belle’s tears after the fact had given him pause for a moment, but he had trusted her when she had said that they were happy tears, and when he had woken this morning, she was still curled up tight by his side with a satisfied smile on her face. There was no hint of regret, and he was pleased that he was not overthinking the situation.

As he brought the omelettes over to the table, he saw what had captured Belle’s attention. She was holding a stiff square of cream card with fancy golden edging to it, and Gold guessed that it was a formal invite to something.

“What’s up?”

“It’s Rory. You remember, my friend from the hospital back in Storybrooke.”

“Yes, I remember.” He had a lot to thank Rory for, really, as the only person in the town who seemed to care about Belle as a person and not a hymen. “What about her?”

“She’s getting married. In April. I mean, I sort of vaguely knew that she was dating Philip, but I hadn’t realised that they were so committed.”

“Well, you can give her my congratulations. I take it that’s the invitation to the wedding.”

Belle nodded. “It’s in Storybrooke at the church, and then the town hall function room afterwards.” She sighed. “Storybrooke.”

They had not made any plans to go back to Storybrooke ever since that disastrous last visit, not even to visit Moe, whom Belle had begun to cut out of her life completely, realising that his worldview was toxic and had made her own life toxic as well. If they went to the wedding, then it would probably be the first time that they would be going back there after all the problems that it had caused.

“We don’t have to go,” he said.

Belle shook her head. “No, I want to go. Rory was one of my best friends in high school and she’s the only real friend from before Boston that I’ve even vaguely kept in touch with. I think I can handle going back for a wedding. Going back for just a visit with no real purpose, perhaps not, but hopefully at a wedding everyone will be more interested in the actual wedding bit than in me and what I’m doing.”

“Well, I’m sure that you don’t have to RSVP right away, there’s time to think it over.” Although he didn’t want to put her off going to her friend’s wedding, Gold really wanted to pre-empt any setbacks in her therapy that the trip might cause. Of course, it was over six months away so it might be a moot point by then, but at the same time, with Belle’s mental state so fragile at the moment, it paid to be cautious.

“Yeah, you’re right. It’s not really going back to Storybrooke that’s making me pause. I just keep thinking about our wedding. That was a Storybrooke wedding and we all know what happened after it. I was so incredibly lucky to have married you, because you were from outside and you understood and took care of me in such a wonderful way; you could offer an outside perspective on all my worries and show me that they were ultimately groundless. But Rory doesn’t have that. She and Philip both grew up in the town and never left; they don’t have the same kind of experience that I do, and I really don’t want her to go through the same horrible chain of thoughts that I did. I want her to have someone who can tell her that it’s all going to be all right, that it’s not going to hurt – well, that it shouldn’t hurt – and that she should absolutely enjoy it, and anyone who tells her otherwise is an idiot. I kind of want to protect her from her upbringing sabotaging her happiness in the same way that you protected me.”

Gold thought about this for a long time, wondering how he could help, but Belle seemed to be on a roll with her thoughts, musing as she ate her omelette. It was good to see that the prospect of going back to Storybrooke did not worry her as much as it might have done before she started therapy, although he didn’t know if she was so focussed on making sure that Rory was going to be all right because she was trying to shy away from her own feelings of fear.

Ultimately, Belle’s feelings were her own, and he could trust her to share them with him if the occasion called for it. He would forever be inordinately grateful to their joint sessions with Dr Hopper for opening up the channels of communication between them and helping to rebuild that trust that had been broken through no fault of their own.

God, the Mother Superior at Storybrooke hospital had a hell of a lot to answer for. If she was at the wedding then Gold didn’t know that he could be trusted not to do her some kind of injury.

“What do you think?”

Gold looked up from his breakfast guiltily, so caught up in thoughts of threatening nuns that he hadn’t been listening to what Belle had been saying.

“Sorry, miles away.”

“I guessed. You were looking very ferocious and I didn’t think that it could be because of the omelette. I swear this is the best one you’ve ever made.”

“Thank you, and no, I was not angry at the omelette. So, what were you saying that I missed?”

“I wanted to write Rory something. Put down all of the fears and things that I had when I started having sex and work through them so that she doesn’t have to feel the same things. These last few months have been such a roller coaster of ups and downs, and whilst the ups have been absolutely wonderful, I wouldn’t wish the downs on my worst enemy, let alone my friend.”

Gold nodded. “I think that’s a good idea.” Maybe putting it all down on paper would help Belle work through it herself, and she could find her own peace by helping Rory to find hers.

The subject was put to the side until they had finished eating and the dishes were in the sink, but Gold could tell that it was still on Belle’s mind, especially when she spoke again.

“Would you… Would you be willing to help me?” Belle was biting her lip again, her cheeks pink. Talking about sex still did not come naturally to her, but she was getting better at opening up every day.

“Of course. Whatever you need.”

“Well, I’d like to use your car analogy for a start.” Belle smiled. “Considering that you just thought it up on the spot that first morning, it really helped me, and since Philip used to work in the garage, I think it might be useful for him as well as for Rory.”

Gold laughed. “You’re welcome to use any of my analogies that you like. And if, at any point, you feel like you need some more practical experience of the things that you’re describing…” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively, and Belle batted his arm playfully before giving a little sigh – not quite content, but not quite worried either.

“I hope that Rory and Philip end up with a marriage like ours,” she said.

“I’m sure that with your help, they will.” Gold leaned over to peck a kiss to her cheek, and Belle leaned into his touch.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, that’s my goal. Although…”

“Yes?”

“Well, you did mention getting a bit more practical experience… Maybe I’m not fully qualified to write anything down just yet.”

Gold just kissed her, her tongue finding his enthusiastically. He could foresee them having quite a lot of fun whilst seeking to help and educate Rory and Philip.


	14. Chapter 14

After everything that had happened the last time she had been in Storybrooke, and after it had taken her so long to recover from it, Belle thought she could be forgiven for feeling a little trepidation about setting foot there again. She couldn’t miss Rory’s wedding, not when she had spent so long on her gift, but at the same time, she couldn’t help wishing that her friend had decided to elope to Hawai’i instead of getting married in the local church.

She glanced over at Aiden as they passed the ‘Welcome to Storybrooke’ sign, and he gave her an encouraging smile. They’d chosen to stay at the hotel out of town where they’d had their reception and wedding night; even though the memories of that night were still a little sour at times, the alternative was staying at the inn, which Belle knew would be even worse.

“We’ll be ok,” he said. “If anyone starts giving you any grief, we can just leave.”

“I can’t just leave Rory on her wedding day.”

“Belle, if everything goes according to plan, she should be far more concerned with being married and enjoying the party than the fact that two of her guests have gone missing. I may only have met her in person about three times, but out of all Storybrooke’s residents, she definitely seems the least likely to kick up a fuss and the most likely to completely understand why you can’t stand to be in the same room as your father or several nuns.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

They had reached the town proper by this point, and the car slowed to a crawl as Aiden picked his way through the streets that were unfamiliar to him, but that Belle had walked so many times she could find her way through them blindfold.

“Where are we going?”

“Rory’s at the inn with her mum getting ready,” Belle said. “Then the wedding’s at the church. I can find my own way there if you drop me at the diner. It’s nice enough weather to walk.”

The day had dawned cool, but sunny, and it looked like it was going to be the perfect weather for a wedding.

“If you’re sure you’ll be ok on your own.”

Belle nodded. “Yes, I’ll be fine.” Although she was still seeing Dr Hopper every couple of months, the therapy had helped her out enormously and she knew that no matter what happened today, she’d be able to get through it and come out the other side stronger, and with Aiden waiting to kiss all her cares away.

They pulled up outside the diner, closed for the occasion since all the staff would be at the wedding, and Belle leaned over to kiss Aiden before she got out. The kiss ended up taking slightly longer than she’d bargained for; once she’d started she didn’t want to let him go. Eventually he pulled away.

“Go on, off with you. We’ll be late at this rate and that’s bad form in any town, not just this one.”

Belle gave a huff of laughter and got out, slipping round the back of the diner to the inn. There was no one on the reception desk, so she just went straight up to the rooms.

Finding Rory was easy – the entire corridor was a bustle of activity with bridesmaids in various states of dress and dishevelment running around, going in and out of rooms. Belle made her way down to the last door on the corridor, wedged open. Rory was sitting in front of the glass whilst Madame Georgette did her hair, prattling on about curls and waves and hairspray. Perhaps the presence of Rory’s mother in the background fussing over the flowers was enough to stop her launching into her spiel on waxing, or maybe that had already happened.

Rory broke into a huge grin on seeing Belle peer around the door, and she batted Madame Georgette away from her head, getting up and coming over to her.

“Belle! I’m so glad that you could come. I’d have completely understood if you didn’t want to come back after, well, you know.”

“Rory, it’s your wedding, I couldn’t miss it for the world.” She paused. “I’ve got a gift for you. I know that traditionally you give them at the reception, but I wanted to give this one now.” She looked up and down the corridor. “Is there anywhere that we can go in private to talk? I swear it’ll only take a moment.”

“Of course!” Rory left the room, ignoring her mother’s protests and Georgette’s twittering about her hair only being half set, and they ducked into the next room. The bridesmaid occupying it was happy to vacate, and Rory closed the door behind her.

“So, what’s the gift?”

Belle held out the notebook that she’d spent the last few months compiling with Aiden and Dr Hopper’s help. It was wrapped in shiny paper and looked entirely inconspicuous.

“You might not want to open it now whilst your mum’s around, but open it before tonight,” she said. “It’s for you and Philip. I don’t know whether it’ll be useful for you or not, but I know that I would have killed for something like it when I got married.” She sighed. “There’s so much that they don’t tell us and yet expect us to know. I mean, you saw me after Dad’s heart attack. You kind of know what went on. That was just the culmination of a lot of things, and I know that I could have saved so much pain if I’d known then what I know now. When I got your invitation, I knew that I wanted to save you that pain too. So…” She spread her hands with a shrug. “I really hope it helps you.”

“What even is it, Belle? I mean, I can hazard a guess.”

“Just some things that I wish I’d known before my own wedding night. And some, well, I suppose you’d call them tips for a happy and healthy marriage.”

Rory smiled, and Belle knew that she understood.

“Thank you, Belle.”

Belle left her to get ready and began to make her way to the church to reunite with Aiden. Even if nothing came of it, she knew that she’d done the right thing. It would never make up for her own experiences, but if it could someone else, then that was enough.

X

The reception was in full swing and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves, including Aurora and Philip, which was a very good sign. Aiden was off at the bar getting refills for them both, and having his ear talked off by old Mrs Schuhmann into the bargain. Belle was about to go and rescue him before he died of boredom when someone hailed her.

“Mrs Gold. We haven’t seen you in these parts for quite some time.”

Belle turned on hearing the Mother Superior’s voice. This was the moment that she had been dreading. She knew that Mother Superior was going to be at the wedding; she was Rory’s boss after all, and in a place like Storybrooke it really paid to keep the boss sweet by inviting them to important social gatherings like your wedding. She had been going over all kinds of coping strategies for getting through the confrontation, but in the face of the nun’s deceptively kind expression masking nasty, vindictive eyes, they all flew clean out of her head, and she was left with nothing.

“You know, you should visit more often,” Mother Superior continued. “Your father hasn’t been the same since his heart attack, he could really do with some help around the house. One would hate to think that you were actively avoiding your duties as a daughter.”

Something inside Belle snapped; icy cold, logical rage flooded through her veins like an emergency glowstick suddenly giving off an intense beam of light.

“My father made it clear to me when I was last here that he no longer considers me to be his daughter since my marriage,” she said coolly. “I can be a good and dutiful little daughter, or I can be a good and dutiful little wife. Apparently in this town, it’s impossible to be both.”

“How is your husband?” The Mother Superior changed the subject seamlessly, leaving Belle even angrier. She had wanted to say more, but before she could launch into a tirade – even though she wasn’t entirely sure what she’d say if she did – something stopped her. She’d had the last word on the matter, after all, and there was no use in flogging a dead horse. If all she had to do was match wits with the Mother to get her to change the subject when it became too difficult for her to defend her ridiculous position, then all she had to do was keep matching her.

“He’s very well, thank you. He’s right over there by the bar, you can ask him yourself, but I know how scandalous it would be for a virtuous lady of the cloth to be seen talking to a man.”

The Mother Superior scowled, but she didn’t rise to the challenge.

“Still no children on the horizon, I see.”

“Not at all. We’ve very much enjoyed living in sin for this past year. It’s been most thrilling. But then, you wouldn’t know, would you?”

“You are a wicked, wicked woman, Mrs Gold.”

“Interesting. Aiden said that just last night. Of course, my mouth was full at the time so I couldn’t really respond.” Belle grinned. She was actually quite enjoying this.

“You’ll go to hell for this.”

“What, making small talk at a wedding or worshipping my husband on my knees? That’s even in the marriage vows. With my body I thee worship, and all that?” Belle shrugged. “Whatever. At least I’ll be in good company down there.”

“Have you no shame at all?”

“No. Because since our last conversation, Mother Superior, I have come to a profound conclusion. It took me a long time to come to it, because what you said hurt me so badly that I needed professional help to come back from it, but ultimately, I don’t care what you think of me. Your opinion means absolutely nothing to me. You can think me indecent, immoral, a whore. It doesn’t matter. I know I’m not, and Aiden knows I’m not, and we both know that there is nothing wrong or shameful about our sex life. So no, I have no shame. Not for you. Your opinion of me isn’t worth my time or worry. Enjoy your evening.”

She gave a little bow and went over to the bar, clutching her purse with white knuckles to stop her hands from shaking. She didn’t even know where that speech had come from; as liberating as it had been at the time, she couldn’t believe that she had actually said those things. A small part of her was worried about the consequences, before she firmly told herself that she didn’t care. What could Mother Superior do to hurt her now? Her words meant nothing; Belle had already worked too hard to make them mean nothing for them to have an impact now.

“Are you ok?” Aiden asked. “What can I get you to drink? You look like you could use one, no offence.”

Belle nodded eagerly. “Gin. Lots of it, and neat. Maybe just give me the entire bottle.”

Aiden raised an eyebrow and ordered her a gin and tonic. “I don’t want to scrape you off the floor at the end of the night, and I know that you hate neat gin. So, what’s brought on this sudden need for strong spirits?”

“Nothing. Well, nothing bad. I think I’m having an out-of-body experience. I just told off Mother Superior.”

Aiden just stared at her and passed her the gin and tonic when it arrived.

“Good for you,” he said eventually, still looking like he was having a bit of trouble taking in what she’d just said. “I’m sorry, did you say that you’d told off Mother Superior?”

“Yes. I told her that the entire reason my married life started out so fucked over was her fault and that I didn’t care what she thought of me. It was incredibly liberating. I think that Dr Hopper would be proud of me.”

“I’m sure he would be. Forget him, though, _I’m_ proud of you.” He wrapped his arm around her and kissed her full on the mouth, a more daring kiss than Belle would ever have managed in Storybrooke before. She relaxed into it completely, bringing her arms up to curl around his neck. It was a wedding, a celebration of love. Why shouldn’t she kiss her husband? If nothing else, if Rory and Philip were watching, then it would give them an excellent example.

Belle knew that she couldn’t change Storybrooke’s mindset overnight; everything had been too ingrained for too long for that. But, maybe, if she could change at least one person’s mind, then that would make a difference. If she could help Rory get the best start in married life, then she could perhaps save Rory the same heartache she’d been through herself, and she could hope that any kids Rory and Philip had would not suffer in the same way their mother had done.

“Belle!”

Speaking of Rory, though, the bouncing bride was pushing through the other guests towards her, a huge grin on her face. Belle pulled away from Aiden to accept Rory’s hug.

“Oh Belle, thank you. We just snuck a look at your gift under the table. It’s great.” There was a fierce red blush rising in Rory’s cheeks, and Belle politely chose to put it down to the crush of people in the room making the temperature rise by several degrees. “Thank you so much. I’m so sorry that you went through what you did, though.”

“It’s ok. If I can channel that into helping you avoid the same thing, then that’s enough for me. I really hope it will help.”

“I’m sure it will.” Rory finally released Belle and turned to Aiden. “And thank you, too, for all the help that you gave Belle, and that you’re inadvertently giving me. I’m so glad that she found you.” She paused. “I’m so glad that I found Philip, to be honest. I think we were both as nervous as each other about tonight. It’s really taken the pressure off a bit.”

Belle smiled. “Just enjoy the learning curve, and don’t pay the blindest bit of attention to what Mother Superior might say about it.”

“I’ll take that under advisement.”

They exchanged another hug, and then Rory went off to find her husband. Belle took a long sip of her gin and tonic and leaned into Aiden’s side with a satisfied sigh.

“I think they’ll be ok,” she said. “They’re both sensible. Philip’s really sweet, I’ve known him since high school. I trust him not to do anything that Rory’s not ready for. In fact, I think that she might be more ready than he is, at this rate.”

Aiden just chuckled, and he kissed her cheek. “How are you holding up yourself?” he asked. “Telling off Mother Superior aside, there are a lot of other people here.”

Belle looked around the room at all the other guests. Her father was suspiciously absent, but she found that she didn’t really miss him. She would go and see him whilst she was in town, but it would only be a short visit. As great as it had been to tell off Mother Superior, she wasn’t in the right frame of mind to have such a discussion with her father yet. It would be a while before she felt like she could confront him properly about the things that he’d said and the way that he’d hurt her so badly. She knew that she’d get there in the end; it wasn’t like there was a time limit on healing and recovery.

“I’m ok,” she said. “Better than I expected to be, really. I’m so glad that you’re here, I don’t think that I would have had the courage to come without you.”

“I’ll always be here whenever you need me.”

“I know. That’s one of the many reasons why I love you so much.” Belle sighed and took another long glug of her drink, finishing it. “I don’t think anyone would notice if we slipped away. I’ve spoken to Rory, and I don’t think that there’s anyone else here with whom I’m desperate to have a conversation. Shall we go?”

“I’m happy to make a move if you are. I don’t want to cut your fun short.”

Belle raised an eyebrow. “I think that calling it fun would be a bit of a stretch. I’m enjoying myself, but I can think of quite a few things that I would rather be doing. Also, they don’t make decent tea here and I really fancy a cup right now.”

Aiden took that as his cue, and together they left the function room, making their way back to the car. The drive back to their hotel was a quiet one, but it was not at all tense, the opposite of the journey into town. Every few seconds Belle would sneak a glance at Aiden, and she couldn’t help but smile every time. She loved him so much, and she’d had more than enough proof over the course of their relationship that he loved her back just as much.

They got back to their room and Aiden set about making tea for the both of them, letting Belle take off her shoes and stockings and get comfortable on the bed. The perfect time to voice the question that she’d been wanting to ask him all evening was now nearly upon her, and she decided to go for it.

“Aiden, I’ve been thinking.”

“Yes?” He brought over her tea and settled on the bed next to her.

“I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, but I never really said anything because having thought about it so much, I always came to the conclusion that I wasn’t ready, and there was no point in bringing it up only to immediately shut it down again.”

“No… Whatever it is, you do have a point there.”

“I was thinking about Mother Superior earlier, and her being on at me about not having had kids yet.”

“Belle, I thought…”

“No, no, hear me out here. I’ve been thinking about this for ages, for way longer than just since this afternoon. And you know that I don’t care about what she thinks. I think my words to her this afternoon proved that. But I was thinking… What if we did start having sex with the intention of making a baby?”

“Oh Belle, my love.” Aiden reached across to cup her cheek, kissing her forehead gently. “My darling, you’ve always known that I would love to have children with you, but I don’t want you to feel like you have to have them.”

“I know. And I don’t. I think I did before. After Dad’s heart attack and everything else that happened the last time we were here, I felt like I probably ought to have a baby just to appease everyone, because that was what married people did. They got married and then they had kids, it was just the natural cycle of things and I thought my life would be so much easier if I had a baby. I thought everyone would stop judging me. But back then I knew that I wasn’t ready for it. And it’s only recently that I’ve thought actually, maybe I am ready for it. Actually, there’s no ‘maybe’ about it. I am ready. I want to be a mum, for no one’s sake but my own. Not because people are expecting it of me, but because I just want it for me. For us. So…” She leaned in and brushed her lips against his. “What do you say?”

Aiden didn’t reply. He pulled her in for a deep kiss, carding one hand into her hair whilst the other took her mug of tea and set it down on the nightstand so that he could push her back against the pillows.

“I love you,” he said eventually.

Belle giggled. “I love you too. I take it that’s a yes, then.”

“Yes. Yes, yes, I would love to have a baby with you, my darling Belle.” He began kissing his way down her neck, sliding his hands beneath her to fumble for her zip and Belle laughed, pushing him off her so that she could sit up and take matters into her own hands, shimmying out of her dress and pulling him back down, revelling in his kisses and nips and licks all over her chest, his tongue darting out to lap at her pebbled nipples through her blue lace bra.

“Easy tiger,” she murmured. “We can’t get started yet, I’m still on birth control.”

Aiden looked up at her and shrugged nonchalantly. “It might take us a few goes to get it right. We need all the practice we can get.”

Belle just laughed. “Well, if we are having a practice run, then you are wearing far too many clothes, my wonderful husband.” She pushed him up and got started on his waistcoat buttons whilst Aiden wrestled himself out of his jacket and tie. Although Belle had always enjoyed the act of undressing him, right now they both felt the same urgency. There would be plenty more opportunities for them to take their time in the future. After all, as Aiden said, they were going to need a lot of practice.

Once they were both naked, Aiden pulled Belle back in for another kiss, rolling them over so that she was on top. Despite her misgivings about the position when they had first begun to try it, it had quickly become one of Belle’s favourites, making her feel like she was in control, an active participant in the proceedings rather than just a spread-eagled ceiling watcher. She giggled, reaching down between them to take Aiden’s half-hard cock and stroke him a couple of times.

“God, Belle.” He threw head back against the pillows with a groan. “Oh my, love, if you keep that up I will not be good for anything, and the making of babies generally benefits from the father to be coming on the inside.”

Belle shrugged, continuing to touch him. “It’s a practice run,” she said. “We’ve got plenty of time to make all sorts of mistakes.”

“In that case, I look forward to the many mistakes we’ll make along the way. All the same though, I think that after everything you’ve survived today, and after how wonderfully brave and badass you’ve been, you deserve a little more care and attention.”

Aiden brought his hand down to comb through her curls, finding her slit and slipping a finger between her folds to touch languidly at her clit, circling the bud as it swelled and dipping down to pet at her entrance, where her warm fluids were already beginning to gather.

“You are extraordinary,” he murmured. “I’ll never get over just how extraordinary you are.”

He brought his fingers up to his mouth, licking her essence off them, and Belle wriggled at the loss of his touch. He might have wanted to take his time with her, but the heat was rising in her veins and she wanted him right now.

“Touch me, Aiden,” she moaned. “Please. I want you.” It felt so good to say it, to mean it, and to feel no shame at all from it. “I want you.”

“Then your wish is my command.” Soon enough his hand was back between her legs, touching her in just the right way to make her fall apart. Belle groaned, her hips rolling in time with the gentle thrusting of his fingers in and out of her as his thumb worked at her clit. She collapsed down onto him as she came, burying her face in against his chest, and he held her close.

“I love you,” she murmured. “Especially when you do things like that.”

“That’s good, because I very much enjoy doing things like that.” Aiden’s voice was husky and full of promise, and Belle knew that the night was only just getting started. She intended to enjoy it to the full, and once coherent thought had returned to her, she slipped her hand back down between them to find Aiden’s cock again, lining him up and sinking down onto him as he pushed up towards her.

She’d been so afraid of it hurting, but now she loved the feeling of being joined like this, and she began to move, a slow rocking of her hips at first, getting quicker and quicker until she was panting, sweat beginning to bead on her skin.

Sex wasn’t perfect; it wasn’t wonderfully special or magical and it wasn’t dirty and sinful. It was just… fun. There was no morality attached to it. No matter what they might get up to between the sheets, whether it was hard and fast and desperate like this or their long, languid lovemaking sessions in the dead of night, Belle knew that it was always enjoyable, and that she should feel no shame in that enjoyment.

Aiden came with a shout, his fingers digging into her waist, and Belle smiled.

She was definitely no longer a virgin, but the more that she thought about it, the more that it didn’t matter. Whether she had sex or not, that wasn’t what defined her. Sex was something she did, it wasn’t who she was. She was so much more than what her genitals were up to.

She knew that, and Aiden knew that, and even though it had taken her a long time to accept it, she had never felt as peaceful as she did now.

Belle let Aiden’s softening cock slip out of her and leaned in to kiss him again, feeling his hands come up to tangle in her hair.

Married life was absolutely wonderful.


End file.
